10 Tips for Using New Technology to Benefit Your Business – Small Business Trends

Technology is constantly changing the way businesses operate. And while thats a good thing, it can also be a bit tough for small business owners to keep up. But members of the online small business community know what its like to work with changing technology. Here are some tips theyve shared for keeping up.

Some businesses could benefit from using chatbots for certain functions like customer service. But its important to understand how exactly to use the technology before getting started. Marcia Riefer Johnston shares the how and why in this Content Marketing Institute post.

If you want to make more sales for your business, segmenting your audience using your CRM or similar tools can provide a major boost. In this Kissmetrics post, Anthony Capetola explains why youre missing out if youre not already segmenting your audience to increase conversions.

Protecting your data should be a top priority for pretty much every small business owner. And Virtual Data Rooms offer a unique opportunity to keep data safe in the cloud. Ivan Widjaya elaborates in this SMB CEO post.

Additionally, there are a number of other security methods you should consider to keep both your businesss physical and virtual property protected. Sage Singleton lists some of those methods in this post on the CorpNet blog.

When hiring marketing agencies or professionals for your business, you need to be aware of some of the shams out there so you dont end up wasting valuable time and resources. In this Strella Social Media post, Rachel Strella details some of the most common types of shams. And BizSugar members sharethoughts on the post here.

Machine learning can provide some major benefits to businesses. But it can also complicate things when it comes to SEO. Learn more about using SEO in the machine learning world in this Search Engine Journal post by Dave Davies.

Through all the technological advances in recent years, email remains a powerful way for businesses to communicate with customers and prospects. If youre looking to nurture leads by email, take a look at the examples in this SUCCESS Agency blog post by Mary Blackiston.

With so much data out there for businesses to take in, it can be difficult to know where exactly to start. But having a strong starting point is paramount, as Stephen H. Yu outlines in this Target Marketing post. He also shares some tips for making informed data decisions.

Social media platforms like Pinterest have had a major impact on how people communicate and how businesses market their products and services. For more tips on how you can use Pinterest to gain more traffic to your website or blog, check out this MyBlogU post by Ann Smarty.

Of course, Facebook is another social media platform that is evolving rapidly with new technology. To keep engagement high, check out these tips from Rebekah Radice. Then see what BizSugar members are saying about the post here.

If youd like to suggest your favorite small business content to be considered for an upcoming community roundup, please send your news tips to: [emailprotected]

Future Tech photo via Shutterstock

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10 Tips for Using New Technology to Benefit Your Business - Small Business Trends

New technology will help TVF&R rescue victims in the dark – KATU

With Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue's new FLIR technology, a person in the water can easily be seen. (KATU Photo)

Firefighters are using new technology designed to save lives in dark and adverse conditions on the water.

The technology by FLIR, a local company, allows rescuers to see in the dark, fog and wintry conditions.

Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue demonstrated the technology to KATU on Friday night from its new boat.

With a swimmer in the water to play the part of a victim, Capt. Jon Voeller explained how the technology works.

This is a grayscale, he said about a monitor showing a black-and-white scene on the river. What happens in the grayscale is any thermal difference anything thats warm is going to show white.

Out of the grayness of the riverbank and the water, the swimmer could be easily seen on the monitor.

Using the boats floodlights to aid in the search would actually hinder the effort. Voeller said they would make the scene in the monitor diffused and unfocused. And he said the floodlights wont work at all in the fog.

(The new technology) works great in the fog, he said. That thermal image will pop right out, right through the fog. This pretty much is a game-changer.

TVF&R paid $10,000 out of its own budget for the technology.

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New technology will help TVF&R rescue victims in the dark - KATU

32-year-old woman killed when car plowed into crowd near Unite the Right rally site – The Daily Progress

Updated, 8:14 p.m.

Charlottesville Police Chief Al Thomas has been empowered to "regulate, restrict or prohibit any assembly of persons, or the movement of persons or vehicles" on any public property including parks, streets and sidewalks, according to a release from city officials.

The emergency ordinance passed City Council unanimously during an emergency meeting at the Albemarle County Office Building, according to the release.

Mayor Mike Signer was quoted in the release, "The Council's decision to give Chief Thomas the authority to enact a curfew as appropriate was made out of an abundance of caution.We did so, having full confidence in Chief Thomas and regional law enforcement's ability to make the final call.

Chief Thomas has yet to take any action, according to the release.

Updated, 7:25 p.m.

President Donald Trump has offered his condolences to the family of the woman killed when a car slammed into a crowd of pedestrians on the Downtown Mall.

"Condolences to the family of the young woman killed today, and best regards to all of those injured, in Charlottesville, Virginia," he tweeted. "So sad!"

BEDMINSTER, N.J. President Donald Trump on Saturday blamed "many sides" for the violent clashes between protesters and white supremacists in Virginia and contended that the "hatred and bigotry" broadcast across the country had taken root long before his political ascendancy.

Updated, 6:33 p.m.

Charlottesville police Chief Al Thomas says a 32-year-old woman was killed when a car plowed into a crowd of counter-protesters on the Downtown Mall. The death is being investigated as a homicide, and the suspect is in custody, Thomas said.

The identity of the woman is being withheld until family can be notified.

Thomas said 35 people were injured during the Unite the Right rally and protests, adding that none was caused by the police.

It is unclear if two deaths caused by a helicopter crash near Birdwood Golf Course are connected to the Unite the Right rally, authorities said, but The Associated Press cited officials in establishing a connection.

President Donald Trump in a tweet said two Virginia State Police troopers died. "Deepest condolences to the families & fellow officers of the VA State Police who died today," he wrote. "You're all among the best this nation produces."

Updated, 5:40 p.m.

The organizer of a rally that drew hundreds of white nationalists and other extremists to Charlottesville says he disavows the violence that eroded it.

Jason Kessler said in an interview Saturday evening that whoever drove a car into a group of counter-protesters did the wrong thing. He said he was saddened that people were hurt.

Kessler is a local blogger and activist who described the event as a pro-white rally. He planned it to protest the citys decision to remove a Confederate monument.

He also criticized law enforcements response to the event, which was dispersed before speakers could take the stage.

He said they did a poor job controlling the chaos to allow free speech.

- The Associated Press

A vehicle plows into a group of protesters marching along 4th Street NE at the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville on the day of the Unite the Right rally on Saturday, August 12, 2017. Photo/Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress

A vehicle plows into a group of protesters marching along 4th Street NE at the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville on the day of the Unite the Right rally on Saturday, August 12, 2017. Photo/Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress

A vehicle plows into a group of protesters marching along 4th Street NE at the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville on the day of the Unite the Right rally on Saturday, August 12, 2017. Photo/Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress

A vehicle plows into a group of protesters marching along 4th Street NE at the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville on the day of the Unite the Right rally on Saturday, August 12, 2017. Photo/Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress

A vehicle reverses after plowing into a group of protesters marching along 4th Street NE at the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville on the day of the Unite the Right rally on Saturday, August 12, 2017. Photo/Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress

This car, stopped on Monticello Avenue, was seen plowing into people on the Downtown Mall.

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Clergy members link arms in front of Emancipation Park before the scheduled start of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville on Saturday, August 12, 2017. Photo/Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress

Members of Vanguard America stand at the edge of Emancipation Park before the scheduled start of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville on Saturday, August 12, 2017. Photo/Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress

Militia members position themselves between people attending the Unite the Right rally and counter-protesters at Emancipation Park before the scheduled start of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville on Saturday, August 12, 2017. Photo/Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress

Cornel West sings with clergy members outside Emancipation Park before the scheduled start of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville on Saturday, August 12, 2017. Photo/Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress

People attending the Unite the Right rally enter Emancipation Park before the scheduled start in Charlottesville on Saturday, August 12, 2017. Photo/Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress

Counter-protesters arrive at Emancipation Park before the scheduled start of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville on Saturday, August 12, 2017. Photo/Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress

Members of the National Socialist Movement arrive at Emancipation Park before the scheduled start of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville on Saturday, August 12, 2017. Photo/Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress

People attending the Unite the Right rally arrive at Emancipation Park before the scheduled start of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville on Saturday, August 12, 2017. Photo/Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress

People attending the Unite the Right rally clash with counter-protesters before the scheduled start of the rally at Emancipation Park in Charlottesville on Saturday, August 12, 2017. Photo/Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress

Alt-Right protesters hold shields at the entrance to Emancipation Park before the scheduled start of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville on Saturday, August 12, 2017. Photo/Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress

Alt-Right groups clash with counter-protesters outside Emancipation Park before the scheduled start of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville on Saturday, August 12, 2017. Photo/Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress

Jason Kessler walks with supporters to McIntire Park after the gathering at Emancipation Park was declared at unlawful assembly by police before the scheduled start of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville on Saturday, August 12, 2017. Photo/Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress

Augustus Sol Invictus walks with supporters to McIntire Park after the gathering at Emancipation Park was declared at unlawful assembly by police before the scheduled start of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville on Saturday, August 12, 2017. Photo/Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress

Alt-Right protesters arrive at McIntire Park after the gathering at Emancipation Park was declared at unlawful assembly by police before the scheduled start of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville on Saturday, August 12, 2017. Photo/Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress

Alt-Right protesters arrive at McIntire Park after the gathering at Emancipation Park was declared at unlawful assembly by police before the scheduled start of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville on Saturday, August 12, 2017. Photo/Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress

Police walk the Downtown Mall after the gathering at Emancipation Park was declared at unlawful assembly by police before the scheduled start of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville on Saturday, August 12, 2017. Photo/Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress

Police maintain a perimeter around Emancipation Park after an unlawful assembly was declared before the scheduled start of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville on Saturday, August 12, 2017. Photo/Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress

Respect, tolerance, peace and love are written in chalk on the steps of Emancipation Park which is empty after an unlawful assembly was declared by police before the scheduled start of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville on Saturday, August 12, 2017. Photo/Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress

Counter-protesters march through the streets around the Downtown mall after an unlawful assembly was declared by police before the scheduled start of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville on Saturday, August 12, 2017. Photo/Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress

A vehicle plows into a group of protesters marching along 4th Street NE at the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville on the day of the Unite the Right rally on Saturday, August 12, 2017. Photo/Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress

A vehicle plows into a group of protesters marching along 4th Street NE at the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville on the day of the Unite the Right rally on Saturday, August 12, 2017. Photo/Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress

A vehicle plows into a group of protesters marching along 4th Street NE at the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville on the day of the Unite the Right rally on Saturday, August 12, 2017. Photo/Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress

A vehicle plows into a group of protesters marching along 4th Street NE at the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville on the day of the Unite the Right rally on Saturday, August 12, 2017. Photo/Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress

A vehicle reverses after plowing into a group of protesters marching along 4th Street NE at the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville on the day of the Unite the Right rally on Saturday, August 12, 2017. Photo/Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress

This car, stopped on Monticello Avenue, was seen plowing into people on the Downtown Mall.

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Protestors and counter protestors take to the streets after the Unite the Right rally was declared unlawful by Virginia State Police Saturday, August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

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32-year-old woman killed when car plowed into crowd near Unite the Right rally site - The Daily Progress

After snapping Big 12 losing streak, Jayhawks look to make further progress in 2017 – FOXSports.com

LAWRENCE, Kan. David Beaty fought back tears last season when Kansas, after enduring a winless and disheartening debut season under him, finally beat lower-level Rhode Island for his first win with the Jayhawks.

If that represented a baby step, a legitimate grown-up step came later in the season.

The Jayhawks had lost 19 straight Big 12 games when Texas rolled into town. They hadnt beaten the Longhorns since 1938, and trailed 21-10 in the fourth quarter. But a spirited comeback forced overtime, and a field goal gave them just their second conference victory in 29 tries.

It was the highlight of a 2-10 season and a crucial building block for the future.

Obviously, we werent satisfied last year with our record, Beaty said, but were extremely encouraged by the progress that our team has made. Weve got a lot of work to do, but I love the energy and enthusiasm this team and our coaching staff shows.

The rebuilding job Beaty inherited from Charlie Weis was arguably the most challenging in major college football. Kansas was well below scholarship limits, and many of those on scholarship hardly had Division I ability. The result was lopsided losses just about every time they took the field.

But after a few painstaking years on the recruiting trail, where Beaty mined not only deep contacts in talent-rich Texas but also the transfer market, the Jayhawks finally have a legitimate Big 12 roster.

They have legitimate Big 12 expectations now, too. Qualifying for a bowl game tops the list.

This team knows that it has to earn everything that it gets. Nothings going to come easy in this league, Beaty said. It never does because its one of the finest leagues on the face of the planet. But these guys that we have, theyre committed to getting better every day.

The biggest question heading into the Jayhawks opener Sept. 2 against Southeast Missouri State is who will be under center. Carter Stanley had impressive moments as a freshman last season, but Washington State transfer Peyton Bender has been neck-and-neck with him throughout the offseason.

Making the battle even more interesting is that Stanley and Bender are roommates.

Its been really a lot of fun, Stanley insisted, and I think obviously its amplified since weve been in fall camp. Every day youve got to bring it, because you know Peyton is a great player and I know hes going to bring it.

There are plenty of other competitions across the roster, from running back to wide receiver to the secondary, where five of the top six defensive backs from last season are gone. But whereas that would be reason to cringe in the past, these days it is merely a reason to be intrigued.

Thats another sign of just how much deeper the Jayhawks are this season.

We have that same drive and passion some guys that went through that (0-12 season), obviously trying to prove a lot of people wrong, defensive tackle Daniel Wise said. Coach Beaty does a great job instilling in us that never-quit mentality, not only that we help instill it in each other.

As the Jayhawks prepare for a new season, here are some of the other story lines:

RUNNING BACK BATTLE

Junior Taylor Martin and sophomore Kahlil Herbert are the front-runners to take over the starting job from the departed Keaun Kinner, but there are plenty of others nipping at their heels. Colorado State transfer Deron Thompson, JUCO star Octavious Matthews and three-star freshman Dom Williams have all looked good this offseason.

John Rieger | John Rieger-USA TODAY Sports

WHAT ABOUT WIDEOUT

Beaty dismissed veteran LaQuvionte Gonzalez for violating team rules, but there is still plenty of talent at wide receiver. Daylon Charlot is a transfer from Alabama and JUCO transfer Kerr Johnson Jr. has been working into the mix during fall camp.

CALLING THE SHOTS

Which running backs and wide receivers get the ball will be decided in part by Doug Meacham, the Jayhawks new offensive coordinator. He was plucked away from TCU to run the Air Raid offense that Beaty installed upon his arrival.

BIG BOY BALL

Wise and Dorance Armstrong Jr. give the Jayhawks perhaps the best defensive tackle tandem in the Big 12. They combined for 30 tackles for a loss and 13 sacks last season.

SCHEDULE SITUATION

After their opener, Kansas plays Central Michigan before visiting Ohio, where it will try to snap a 40-game road losing streak. Big 12 play begins Sept. 23 at West Virginia.

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After snapping Big 12 losing streak, Jayhawks look to make further progress in 2017 - FOXSports.com

Two killed in helicopter crash near Birdwood Golf Course – The Daily Progress

Two people were killed late Saturday afternoon when a helicopter crashed into a wooded area near a home close to Birdwood Golf Course on Old Farm Road in Albemarle County.

President Donald Trump in a tweet said two Virginia State Police troopers died. "Deepest condolences to the families & fellow officers of the VA State Police who died today," he wrote. "You're all among the best this nation produces."

No one on the ground was injured, police said.

State police would not say if the helicopter had been involved in monitoring the clashes between alt-right demonstrators and counter protesters ahead of the scheduled Unite the Right rally downtown.

The Associated Press reported that officials said the deaths have been linked to the violent white nationalist rally earlier in the day.

The cause of the crash remains under investigation. State police are on scene with Albemarle County police and fire units.

Neighbors said the helicopter hovered low over houses before going into nearby woods.

The rest is here:

Two killed in helicopter crash near Birdwood Golf Course - The Daily Progress

Rookie Progress Report: First gameday in the books – Giants.com (blog)

A look at the Giants' rookies performances against the Steelers:

Preseason in the NFL means different things to different players.

For the young guys, it means getting an opportunity to prove the stage is not too big and that your teams assessment of you was justified. The New York Giants got a good look at their young players on Friday night when they kicked off their four-game preseason schedule against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

TE Evan Engram

Depth chart: TE2 Preseason Week 1: 2 TGTS, 1 REC, 11 YDS

Coach Ben McAdoo, a former tight ends coach in Green Bay, recently asked his rookie first-round pick to play faster and not think too much. The Ole Miss product responded with some big practices in training camp, including catching a touchdown to win a two-minute drill, but Friday night was all about translating it to game speed. Engram is currently listed on the depth chart behind veteran Rhett Ellison, whose blocking complements Engrams playmaking ability at the position. While Ellison tied for a team-high three receptions for 20 yards, Engrams first and only catch was an 11-yard gain late in the first half. He was targeted twice overall.

>> WATCH GIANTS VS. STEELERS HIGHLIGHTS

This stuff, you cant put into words, Engram said. This feeling, this dream come true. And to be out here with these guys, it was really exciting. I cant honestly put it into words. It was just a really unique and amazing feeling. I felt really at home out there. I felt really at home, I felt comfortable and I cant wait to just keep building on tonight for the rest of the season.

DT Dalvin Tomlinson

Depth chart: RDT2 Preseason Week 1: 4 TCKLS (2 SOLO)

Tomlinson was drafted to help fill one of the few holes on an elite defense, which was created by the departure of Johnathan Hankins in free agency. On the first unofficial depth chart, Jay Bromley was listed on the first team opposite All-Pro Damon Harrison. Tomlinson was behind Bromley, and Robert Thomas trailed Harrison. While the competition continues, you can expect to see each of them plenty as defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo rotates the big men in and out. While Bromley staked his claim with three tackles, including one for loss, Tomlinson held his own and recorded four tackles while Pittsburgh managed just 10 first downs on the night.

I feel like [being the starter is] the long-run goal, the long-term goal, Tomlinson said after this first preseason game. As of right now, Im just trying to improve and get better each and every day, and then hopefully I can get the starting job when the season starts.

In the meantime, he has a talented group on defense to mentor him.

Its kind of like the brotherhood back at Alabama, he said. Just to come here, be with a great defense, and have the older guys just keep helping you get better each and every day, its just a great feeling.

QB Davis Webb

Depth chart: QB4 Preseason Week 1: 8/16, 67 YDS, 61.2 RTG

The third-round picks practice reps have been limited mostly to a seven-on-seven drill called opportunity, which is designed to give younger players a chance to show what theyve got. While his team reps have been scarce, Webb did get a shot at running the two-minute drill in the final full practice before the preseason opener. Webb is playing behind Josh Johnson and Geno Smith, who are competing to be Eli Mannings backup. Manning got Friday night off, resulting in a start for Johnson. Smith took over late in the first half, and Webb anchored. Entering with 6:39 left in the game, he led the final two drives, which resulted in 58 yards on 17 plays.

I thought he had some ups and downs in there, McAdoo said. He competed nicely, came out of the pocket, had some chances to make some plays. He did fairly well.

RB Wayne Gallman

Depth chart: RB5 Preseason Week 1: 5 CAR, 11 YDS; 1 REC, 4 YDS

Gallman, who left Clemson as one of the most productive running backs in school history, is part of a backfield now headed by second-year pro Paul Perkins. The new-look group managed 73 yards on 23 carries (3.2 average) on Friday night. Gallman had a long run of seven yards in his debut and also notched a reception for four yards.

Hes everything that I expected, Perkins said of Gallman earlier in camp. Hes awesome, has tremendous burst, speed, agility, vision. He has long arms to keep defenders off of him. Hes a smart guy, so a student of the game, truly.

DE Avery Moss

Depth chart: RDE4 Preseason Week 1: 2 TCKL (1 SOLO)

Despite leaving Tuesdays practice with a shoulder issue, Moss was able to make his debut. While fellow defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul had the night off, the Giants recorded six tackles for loss, including three sacks. Moss is looking to become a key part of the rotation of pass rushers to give Pierre-Paul and Olivier Vernon a breather or two throughout the course of a game.

OT Adam Bisnowaty

Depth chart: RT2 Preseason Week 1: Replaced Bobby Hart in 2nd quarter.

As a whole, the Giants allowed seven sacks and gained 73 yards on the ground against the Steelers. After the starters played the first quarter, the second-team offensive line came in. That included sixth-round pick Adam Bisnowaty, who has been backing up Bobby Hart at right tackle all summer. McAdoo likes the competition building from that second group, particularly on the right side. Meanwhile, undrafted rookie Chad Wheeler is working behind Ereck Flowers at left tackle and got a chance to run with the first team this past week in practice.

They are two scrappy, young guys, McAdoo said. Wheeler is a natural player out there, he moves his feet very easily. Bisnowaty is a physical player. He works hard in the run game. He needs to improve his techniques in the passing game.

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Rookie Progress Report: First gameday in the books - Giants.com (blog)

WWE UK champ Pete Dunne pulled from this weekend’s Progress shows due to injury – Cageside Seats (blog)

Well, this is a bummer.

WWE United Kingdom and Progress World champion Pete Dunne was set to be featured on Progress shows in New York today (Aug. 12) and Boston tomorrow. However, the Bruiserweight suffered a cut which required 11 stitches while working a Battle Pro event in Brooklyn on Friday night. The injury, which is above his left eye and happened during what was described as an errant belt spot in his match with Darius Carter, is serious enough that he is not medically cleared to work this weekend.

PWInsider reported WWE was considering pulling Dunne from the Progress shows earlier this morning, and the co-owner of that promotion confirmed it a short time ago in this Twitter video:

Dunne was scheduled to defend against Raw and 205 Live Superstar Jack Gallagher on the New York show in one of two bouts WWE was co-promoting fairly heavily. Jim Smallman didnt say for sure that Gallagher will still be competing, but theres no reason to think he wouldnt be - or that Dakota Kais planned tag match would change. He does confirm Dunne will still be appearing even though he cant wrestle.

This is definitely a disappointment for the promotion, wrestlers and fans, but sounds like an injury Pete can recover from fairly quickly - and Progress has enough talent and a track record of great storytelling, so they should be able to work around this, too.

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WWE UK champ Pete Dunne pulled from this weekend's Progress shows due to injury - Cageside Seats (blog)

Progress continues on Lakeland Elementary School project – West Central Tribune

From a distance, large gaps in the exterior might make people question the progress, but the interior's a busy place. Crews are working their way through classrooms finishing and painting walls and mounting white boards.

On a tour of the new PK-5 school this week, senior project manager Stephen Plantenberg explained the timeline for the school, which is scheduled to open in January. Lakeland is in southeastern Willmar along Lakeland Drive, east of the Kandiyohi County YMCA.

Superintendent Jeff Holm and School Board member Justin Bos joined the tour. Plantenberg works for RA Morton Construction Managers of St. Cloud, hired by the school district to oversee the largest of the referendum projects.

The building was to have opened this month, but bad weather and other issues caused delays. It's now scheduled to open in January. "I don't see any reason why that won't happen," Plantenberg said.

The school is the largest part of a $52.35 million building program approved by voters in a 2015 bond referendum. Bids on Lakeland construction so far have totaled about $20 million, and it is within budget. The budget includes building furniture and equipment for two playgrounds.

Plantenberg said casework and terrazzo flooring will arrive soon, and contractors plan to have major construction finished by Oct. 15. Final finishing, cleaning and mechanical system testing will take place after that. Some time-consuming projects, like the curing of the wooden gym floor, could take a bit longer.

Plantenberg led the tour through the education wing, where each grade will have a pod of classrooms surrounding a commons area for group activities. Crews are working their way through the rooms, finishing and painting walls and installing rest room tiles.

"It definitely feels good to see the progress," Holm said. "It's easier to visualize the final product."

Bos said he thinks most people are excited to see the school open, "just like we are." Residents are excited to have a school opening again in that part of town.

The building will be built to last. For example, "all the piping is soldered, not crimped," something that takes more time but should last longer, Plantenberg said.

Workers poured the last of the concrete for the floor in the school's commons/cafeteria area this week. In the gym, workers were on scissor lifts, installing duct work in the ceiling.

Throughout the building, ceilings are open, revealing what appears to be miles of pipes and wiring.

Installation of kitchen equipment hasn't started, but the plumbing and wiring is ready for it.

Outside the construction zone, grasses and weeds nearly waist high cover the school site.

Plantenberg said landscaping and playground preparation is scheduled for fall. The entire site will be fenced, too.

The fence will keep children away from a drainage ditch at the eastern boundary of the school site. "That ditch rarely has water in it, but it is quite steep," Holm said, and fencing will keep adventurous students in sight.

Plantenberg said many local contractors have worked on the building, and he's been pleased with their dedication to the project and the quality of their work.

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Progress continues on Lakeland Elementary School project - West Central Tribune

Film Review: Good Time – Consequence of Sound (blog)

Director

Ben Safdie, Joshua Safdie

Cast

Jennifer Jason Leigh, Robert Pattinson, Barkhad Abdi

Like some of the best films about New York City, Good Time ably captures the constancy of movement at all hours of the night. Much of the films action takes place in half-empty hospitals and apartments and an amusement park after closing hours. Yet, in every case, somebody is still pulling a graveyard shift, getting high, looking out for their own, or just trying to get paid. That last bit is integral to Joshua and Ben Safdies harrowing single-night odyssey: were all hustling, in one way or another, all the time. Some are just a lot better at it than others.

Early on, it seems like Constantine Connie Nikas (Robert Pattinson) could be among the best. A straw-haired degenerate in an oversized hoodie, with wild eyes that exude canny survivalism and junkie panic in equal measures, Connie has bigger plans for himself and his brother, Nick (co-director Ben). An unnerving early sequence watches Nick, captured in the Safdies already-signature nauseating close-ups, as he attempts to work through a behavioral therapy session. Nick deals with some sort of neurological disability, but Connie refuses to allow his brother to be put through sessions that he finds both demeaning and upsetting to his brother. (For his part, Nicks difficulty with regard to even basic questions suggests that he absolutely should be getting more help than hes evidently had.) As Connie tells him, Its just you and me. Im your friend. Alright?

And then Connie and Nick don facial prosthetics and stage one of the more exhilarating bank robberies in recent cinematic history, made all the more so by the matter-of-fact staging with which its delivered. Good Time is a wandering film, and not all of its many digressions land. But the best ones, starting with the robbery and its screw-tightening aftermath, offer the kind of pure cinema capable of sending even the most jaded critics and audiences into fits of white-knuckle panic. Connie is simultaneously more shrewd than his wiry appearance would suggest and tragically over-convinced of his own genius. Soon an unexpected paint bag is triggered, Nick ends up in police custody and sent off to await trial on Rikers Island, and Connie is left to somehow obtain $10,000 for Nicks bail before things can get any worse.

Over the course of a night bathed in neon, pitch-darkness, and depravity, Connie encounters a number of fellow strays on his way to save Nick from the kind of hell that Connie himself has created for his brother. Good Time recalls the wearily hallucinatory qualities of other one-shot stories like Night on Earth and After Hours, but what the Safdies and co-screenwriter Ronald Bronstein accomplish here is a film of a distinctly filthy ilk. The Safdies exceptional 2015 feature Heaven Knows What displayed a similarly keen eye for the rituals of the day-at-a-time criminal, but where that film took a borderline anti-narrative approach to its travels alongside an unrepentant heroin addict, Good Time functions on more of a rail, albeit a ferocious one.

Good Time takes an episodic approach to Connies journey, and those episodes are consistently engaging, even as some of them occasionally threaten to leech away at the films breakneck momentum. One vignette involving a siege on a hospital leads to a remarkable gallows punchline. Connie finds a moment of respite with Crystal (Taliah Webster), an underage girl who recognizes Connies need for shelter as both suspicious and not worth causing too much trouble over. A security guard at that aforementioned theme park (Barkhad Abdi) finds himself with the severe misfortune of happening onto Connies barreling path. Some leave more of an impression than others; an encounter with a beaten parolee (Buddy Duress) leads to an onscreen digression so lengthy that it at once fits well within the films anything-goes rhythm and brings it to a near-complete halt. (Its nevertheless a damned funny few minutes of filmmaking, in a vacuum.) Connies frantic appeals to Corey (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a well-off but unreliable lover, feel equally at odds with the films central story, even if Leighs nervous performance serves as one of the films many deft methods of creating absolute unease.

The Safdies build a world of constant paranoia in every way, from the shaky handheld photography to the endless parade of strangers existing as possible would-be hazards. But the most exceptional method is the rattling, sumptuous score by Oneohtrix Point Never. That its easily the best compositional work to grace any 2017 film to date is secondary; this is one of those rare film scores that emerges as its own character, as integral to the success of Good Time as any of the films impressive performances. As the Safdies race from one stunning image to the next (a zoomed-out crane motif framing Connie as a constant rat in an overwhelming maze, a dark room lit solely by a grainy television), OPNs endless cycles of oppressive synths and dissonant electronic sounds conjure unease even in the most straightforward moments of respite. The score is a faithful mirror of Connies psyche, all panic and terror and fleeting instances of stoned, euphoric grandeur.

Good Time is a film of trembling anxiety, and while the score and the Safdies terrific direction both aid this, its Pattinsons outstanding performance that pins even the most outlandish occurrences to a deep sense of emotion. The actor, having long abandoned the days of stiff paycheck roles for increasingly ambitious fare, delivers a feral star turn that should more than silence any remaining skeptics. Like an animal, Connie simply reacts with an alarming lack of forethought, and Pattinson almost appears to be piecing each scene together as he goes along. But this is a meticulous performance; his slow crescendo of harrowing desperation builds to one lingering shot that builds a wealth of meaning out of the actors tightly framed visage, defining the entire film before it in a single image of Pattinsons face. In a world of near-anarchy, its Connie who holds it all together.

At one point in his journey, Connie asserts that something is happening to me tonight, and I feel like its deeply connected to my purpose. Its a purpose rife with drugs and exploitation and an inexplicable allusion to Pepe the Frog that will undoubtedly spur on many an addled debate in the coming weeks, but its a purpose that Connie pursues with alarming velocity. In its immersion in a world full of scrambling and sweat and constant alarm, Good Time observes something primal about the worlds that exist beneath the worlds in which so many other movies are made and viewed. Theres no time for thinking and even less for processing. You simply react until you cant any longer.

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Film Review: Good Time - Consequence of Sound (blog)

For Doomsday Preppers, the End of the World Is Good for Business – New York Times

Clearly, when something happens in the world like North Korea right now, it is on peoples minds, Mr. Sullivan said. It just causes them to rethink where they stand in the event of war, in the event of job loss, in the event of a natural disaster.

Not every company in the prepper industry has seen an uptick. Joe Marshall, managing editor of Survival Life, a website that supports an online retail operation and the Banana Bay Tactical shop in Austin, Tex., said it was too soon to see an impact on sales.

The truth is, theres been some chatter, he said, but for most of our people, theyre already preparing.

Google searches for prepper hit their highest level in a month on Tuesday, while searches for survivalism neared a high last reached in July, according to Google Trends, a site from the technology giant that shows what users have been researching.

Keith Bansemer, vice president of marketing at My Patriot Supply, which sells bulk food, water devices and seeds, said customers have started snapping up the companys six-month food supplies. They wanted to do something to feel more secure, he explained.

By prepping, youre actually alleviating fear, Mr. Bansemer said.

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For Doomsday Preppers, the End of the World Is Good for Business - New York Times

Film Review: The Glass Castle Fails on Almost Every Level – Splice Today

In The Glass Castle, the charismatic, larger-than-life father of a huge family drags his brood across the country, defending his unconventional worldview and nontraditional parenting methods against a skeptical world. This was also the premise of another movie, Captain Fantastic, which came out a year ago, featuring Viggo Mortensen as a very similar father, raging all film long about the failures and corruption of the square world. The Glass Castle, despite some good performances, mostly fails for the same reason Captain Fantastic did: It gives its father character a redemption, and a canonization, that he doesnt deserve.

The Glass Castle is based on the bestselling memoir by Jeannette Walls, who was a magazine gossip columnist in 1980s-90s New York City, and a sometime MSNBC fixture. Brie Larson plays Walls, and the book tells the story of her very nontraditional upbringing, in which Walls and her three siblings were herded around the rural West and South by their parents (Woody Harrelson and Naomi Watts), as their neer-do-well dad fled creditors, pursued one failed scheme after another, and drank a hell of a lot.

Walls fathers worldview isnt that far off from Mortensens in Captain Fantastic: a combination of vague political leftism, paranoia, and off-the-grid survivalism, although The Glass Castle version combines this with crippling alcoholism and a failure to ever follow through on any of his big plans. His oft-mentioned, never-realized plot to build a glass-enclosed dream home gives the memoir, and film, its title.

The Glass Castle toggles back and forth between Walls childhood and her adulthood, as a rising gossip columnist wearing Working Girl-style fashions and preparing to marry a finance guy (New Girls Max Greenfield, playing the part not nearly as Scaramucci-like as he probably should have).The flashbacks, over and over, show Harrelson as a caring but largely out-of-control dad, seemingly not allowing his children to go to school or see doctors, and exposing his family to all sorts of horrors, up to and including leaving them in the care of a relative who, its implied, is a known sexual abuser. Watts plays the mom as more of a space cadet, a much more natural use of the actress talents than the Twin Peaks revival has shown us so far.

But then the film, in its third act, pivots and makes a hero out of this drunken man, through a couple of strategically inserted flashbacks. It also concludes with a rather ridiculous either/or: Be a soulless 1980s Manhattan yuppie, or buy in to the Rex Walls Way. There are no other options for how to live ones life. This pivot all but ruins the film because its so unearned.

The Glass Castle was directed by Daniel Desson Cretton, whose previous film, Short Term 12, was one of the best films of 2013 and among the best indie movies this decade. It also starred Larson, as a counselor at a group home, and cemented her as an actress of the top tier; that performance was much more deserving of awards attention than her part in Room, which won Larson a Best Actress Oscar two years ago.

Crettons new film, unfortunately, is a big step down, and the filmmaking isnt all that impressive either. One scene, in which Harrelson repeatedly throws a young Jeannette into a pool, is painfully on the nose even before Harrelson explains afterward that its a metaphor for life itself. Another big weakness? The film barely touches on Walls work as a gossip columnist, or how her unconventional upbringing led her to such work.

Harrelson has been on something of a roll lately. His Kilgore/Kurtz routine in this summers War For the Planet of the Apes was the best thing about that film, and he gave a stirring, quietly against-type performance in last years outstanding The Edge of Seventeen. Here, though? His performance as Rex is a lot of scenery-chewing and overacting. Larson is better, but shes starting to get typecast as a young woman coming to turns with victimizationwhich was a revelation in Short Term 12, but at this point shes repeating herself. Fans of the book, and Walls other writing, may appreciate the film version of The Glass Castle. But otherwise, theres not much reason to see it.

Whose Streets? Is an Illuminating Look at Ferguson Protests. B

Whose Streets? is part of a burgeoning genre of on-the-ground documentaries about the Ferguson protests and other recent major demonstrations against police brutality. Craig Atkinsons Do Not Resist, last fall, got there first, with a more overarching look at how law enforcement culture led to those events.

Directed by Sabaah Folayan, Whose Streets?, a Sundance selection from January, focuses more specifically on a handful of protestors who were on the ground in Ferguson. It follows a few protesters over the course of about a two-year period, through some raw and often uncomfortable stuff. Its infuriating, but very well done. The challenge with any film like this is that a lot of similar footage was shown on the news, for hours, every night for weeks and even months, back in 2014. Folayans film meets this challenge by going in-depth with several people, the most compelling of which is Britanny Farrell, a nursing student who at one point faced jail over her role in the protests. We also see one of those block-the-highway protests, from the standpoint, for a change, of the ones doing the blocking.

There are some egregious sins of omissionthe film mentions the Department of Justice report about systematic bias in the Ferguson Police Department, but leaves out the other DOJ report, from the same day, that sided with Darren Wilsons version of events. But overall, Whose Streets? is a compelling, nerve-wracking, and illuminating look at a fraught subject.

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Film Review: The Glass Castle Fails on Almost Every Level - Splice Today

Nottinghamshire sees increase in Witchcraft complaints | The Wild … – The Wild Hunt

NOTTINGHAMSHIRE, Eng An unusual upswing in the number of complaints made to the police in one area of Nottinghamshire is concerning both local and national Pagans.

Ashfield North saw 87 calls referring to Witches in 2016, and 38 in the previous year. These figures released to the Nottingham Evening Post as part of police statistics under a freedom of information request is extremely high compared to other parts of the country, and the reason for it remains unclear.

Local experts in the paranormal have suggested that some of these complaints relate to Witchcraft carried out in the past, but local Pagans are becoming concerned that the ordinary practices found in modern Pagan paths are also being reported as sinister.

Ashley Mortimer, director of the Nottingham Pagan Network, said, Thirty eight reports out of 44 [paranormal incidents in Ashfield North] says more to me about the level of reporting than necessarily about the level of witchcraft activity.

I think peoples understanding of Witchcraft is misconstrued and has been for centuries, Mortimer told a local reporter. Weve actually had a bad press for a long time.

In that same interview, Mortimer explained to the mainstream press that Witchcraft is a modern-day interpretation of ancient Pagan beliefs. [] Its about believing in nature, and having the divine imminent in nature, personified and recognised as a lunar goddess and a solar god. But witchcraft is only one small part of modern-day Paganism. If you were to see someone dont be alarmed were quite happy to explain to people. But I dont like them being seen as sinister, because it isnt sinister.

Mortimer also noted that Pagans are the sixth biggest faith group in Nottinghamshire, as per the 2011 census.

In a conversation with The Wild Hunt, Mortimer said that he thinks the complaints might be the work of one serial reporter but that the released figures contain no specific information on what the substance of the calls to police might be.

One clue might lie in claims made by the Ashfield-based paranormal magazine Haunted. It statesthatits paranormal team has encountered several potential incidents of Witchcraft in the area, and at one point felt surrounded by not very nice people.

In an article for that magazine, James Pykett, part of the Haunted LIVE paranormal investigation team and owner of the Facebook page Haunted Nottinghamshirewas quoted as saying, Its no surprise to be honest, we investigate all over Nottinghamshire and as most of the boys are from this area, locations are easily accessible in Ashfield and we have had lots of paranormal activity.

As for Witchcraft, lets just say that I can easily understand why there has been 87 reports of Witchcraft in Ashfield North.

He did not elaborate any further. However, Jason Wall, also part of the paranormal team, added: Recently we were on the Teversal Trail, and it felt like we were being watched, we picked up a lot of female names and it felt like we were being circled.

However, it would seem that this was a matter of psychic impression rather than the presence of living people.

Nottingham has been in the news before in connection with complaints made against Paganism, notably an episode of Satanic Panic in 1988, which saw a number of children taken into care from a city estate after multi-generational incest and abuse.

However, the police concluded that there was no evidence of Satanism or indeed Witchcraft being involved in that enquiry, but this was disputed by social services.The children concerned spoke of a number of structures, including underground rooms beneath churches, being the scene of Satanic ceremonies. None were found..

In 1989, the Nottingham Police/Social Services Joint Enquiry Team (JET) concluded in a report:

We had not found any physical corroborative evidence in the Broxtowe case and no longer believed the childrens diaries substantiated the claim of Satanic abuse. In our view they reflected other influences and were open to alternative interpretations. Our research indicated that nobody else [in other countries] had found corroborative physical evidence either.

All the evidence for its existence appears to be based upon disturbed children and adults claiming involvement during interviews by social workers, psychiatrists, and Church Ministers who already themselves believed in its existence. It seemed possible that Satanic abuse only existed in the minds of people who wanted or needed to believe in it.

There is no evidence that the complaints today and the episode in 1988 are connected, but local Pagans hope that the recent sharp rise in the complaints being made to the police are not a resurgence of the mindset that led to the 1988 allegations.

A spokesperson for the Nottinghamshire police recently noted: We are very busy dealing with genuine calls for service and receiving calls about paranormal activity, UFOs and witches may delay our ability to pick up the phone to someone in real need of help.

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Nottinghamshire sees increase in Witchcraft complaints | The Wild ... - The Wild Hunt

Trump and the Politics of Nihilism – Truthdig

Henry Giroux

Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and...

Ignorance is a terrible wound when it is self-inflicted, but it becomes a dangerous plague when the active refusal to know combines with power. President Trumps lies, lack of credibility, woefully deficient knowledge of the world, and unbridled narcissism have suggested for some time that he lacks the intelligence, judgment and capacity for critical thought necessary to occupy the presidency of the United States. But when coupled with his childish temperament, his volatile impetuousness and his Manichaean conception of a worlda reductionist binary that only views the world in term of friends and enemies, loyalists and traitorshis ignorance translates into a confrontational style that puts lives, if not the entire planet, at risk.

Trumps seemingly frozen and dangerous fundamentalism, paired with his damaged ethical sensibility, suggests that we are dealing with a form of nihilistic politics in which the relationship between the search for truth and justice on the one hand and moral responsibility and civic courage on the other has disappeared. For the past few decades, as historian Richard Hofstadter and others have reminded us, politics has been disconnected not only from reason but also from any viable notion of meaning and civic literacy. Government now runs on willful ignorance as the planet heats up, pollution increases and people die. Evidence is detached from argument. Science is a subspecies of fake news, and alternative facts are as important as the truth. Violence becomes both the catalyst and the result of the purposeful effort to empty language of any meaning. Under such circumstances, Trump gives credence to the notion that lying is now a central feature of leadership and should be normalized, and this serves as an enabling force for violence.

For Trump, words no longer bind. Moreover, his revolting masculinity now stands in for dialogue and his lack of an ethical imagination. Trump has sucked all of the oxygen out of democracy and has put into play a culture and mode of politics that kill empathy, revel in cruelty and fear and mutilate democratic ideals. Trumps worldview is shaped by Fox News and daily flattering and sycophantic news clips, compiled by his staff, that boost his deranged need for emotional validation.

All of this relieves him of the need to think and empathize with others. He inhabits a privatized and self-indulgent world in which tweets are perfectly suited to colonizing public space and attention with his temper tantrums, ill-timed provocations, and incendiary vocabulary. His call for loyalty is shorthand for developing a following of stooges who offer him a false and egregiously grotesque sense of communityone defined by a laughable display of ignorance and a willingness to eliminate any vestige of human dignity.

Anyone who communicates intelligently is now part of the fake news world that Trump has invented. Language is now forced into the service of violence. Impetuousness and erratic judgment have become central to Trumps leadership, one that is as ill-informed as it is unstable. Trump has ushered in a kind of anti-politics and mode of governance in which any vestige of informed judgment and thought is banished as soon as it appears. His rigid, warlike mentality has created an atmosphere in the United States in which dialogue is viewed as a weakness and compromise understood as personal failing.

As Hofstadter argued more than 50 years ago, fundamentalist thinking is predicated on an anti-intellectualism and the refusal to engage other points of view. The other is not confronted as someone worthy of respect but as an enemy, a threatening presence that must be utterly vanquishedand in Trumps case, humiliated and then destroyed.

Philosopher Michel Foucault elucidated the idea that fundamentalists do not confront the other as a partner in the search for the truth but an adversary, an enemy who is wrong, who is harmful, and whose very existence constitutes a threat. There is something even more serious here: in this comedy, one mimics war, battles, annihilations, or unconditional surrenders, putting forward as much of ones killer instinct as possible.

Trump is missing a necessity in his fundamentalist toolbox: self-reflection coupled with informed judgment. He lacks the ability to think critically about the inevitable limitations of his own arguments, and he is not held morally accountable to the social costs of harboring racist ideologies and pushing policies that serve to deepen racist exclusions, mobilize fear and legitimize a growing government apparatus of punishment and imprisonment. What connects the moral bankruptcy of right-wing ideologues such as Trump and his acolyteswho embrace violent imagery to mobilize their followers with the mindset of religious and political extremistsis that they share a deep romanticization of violence that is valorized by old and new fundamentalisms.

The current crisis with North Korea represents not only the possibility of a nuclear war triggered by the irrational outburst of an unhinged leader, but also a death-dealing blow to the welfare state, young people, immigrants, Muslims and others deemed dangerous and therefore disposable.

Trump has replaced politics with the theater and poison of nihilism. His politics combines spectacle with vengeance, violence and a culture of cruelty. Trumps impetuous and badly informed comments about North Korea represent more than a rash, thoughtless outburst. Rather, they contribute to rising tensions and the increased possibility of a major military conflict. Trumps dangerous rhetoric is symptomatic of the death of historical consciousness, public memory, critical thinking and political agency itself at the highest levels of governance. Under such circumstances, politics degenerates into dogma coupled with a game-show mentality symptomatic of a perpetual form of political theater that has morphed into a new kind of mass mediated barbarism. This is how democracy ends, with a bang and a whimper.

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Trump and the Politics of Nihilism - Truthdig

The dark side of tourism in Thailand – NEWS.com.au

WHEN it comes to dream destinations, Thailand is way up there on the list for Australian travellers and with good reason.

Its flanked by some of the worlds most stunning beaches, has kilometres of untouched jungle, is laced with ancient temples, has inimitable night-life and legendary, fiery cuisine.

All of this has been drawing vagabonds, expats, travellers, and artists for decades, enchanted by the mix of peace and chaos, the spiritual and the unflinchingly capitalist, the tranquil nature and urban hedonism.

That enthusiasm on the part of travellers has made tourism incredibly important to the Thai economy. In 2017, it is expected to generate more than $99 billion.

Most tourists visiting Thailand come away with nothing but amazing memories, great tans, and a whole lot of stories.

But there is an underbelly to the tourism trade in Thailand. Some of that underbelly can be particularly unsavoury, and at times even deadly.

What follows are just a few issues that have put Thailands tourism in the news recently. All are worth considering when youre planning your trip to make sure you dont find yourself in a dangerous situation, or unwittingly supporting practices that victimise the planets most vulnerable.

IS KOH TAO REALLY DEATH ISLAND?

Koh Tao has been dubbed Death Island.Source:istock

Talk to almost anyone whos been to Thailand and youll likely hear the name Koh Tao slip out of their mouths.

This island is, for many tourists, exactly what a trip to Thailand is about. There are countless budget-friendly beachside hotels and bungalows, white-sand beaches, turquoise seas, and all sorts of backpacker bars slinging cheap drinks.

Koh Tao has gotten a bad reputation recently due to a spate of deaths involving foreign tourists. That attention became impossible to ignore when, in 2014, the bodies of Hannah Witheridge and David Miller were discovered on one of the islands beaches. While the case was supposedly resolved, responsibility was pinned on two migrant workers from Myanmar.

Complaints about the trial included accusations of an improperly sealed crime scene as well as the inappropriate handling of evidence. The death sentence of the two workers also speaks volumes about the fates of marginalised communities in tourism-heavy destinations. The pair may have been tortured and framed, in part, because of their outsider status as migrant workers.

Then in early 2017, a Belgian backpacker was found dead in the islands jungles. Her death was ruled a suicide by police, though ongoing investigations now suggest everything from murder to involvement with a rogue ashram on neighbouring Koh Phangan.

Several other deaths have occurred in recent years, with relatives of the deceased often expressing dismay at local police handling.

All of that being said, most will find the island beautiful and safe, and home to superb snorkelling.

THE KAYAN PEOPLE

A girl from the Kayan community in Thailand. Picture: Flickr/indigo moodSource:Flickr

What little unsavoury news that Westerners hear about Thailand is often focused on the fates of a small minority of foreign travellers who have met tragic ends. However, other sectors of Thailands tourism industry have problematic effects on both local Thai people and immigrants from Thailands impoverished neighbours in Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos.

Migrant workers and refugees are made scapegoats for crime and unemployment rates around the world. The same holds true in Thailand.

Youve likely seen pictures of Kayan women, who famously elongate their necks to mind-bending lengths using heavy brass coils as they age. The group fled violence and persecution in Myanmar and were granted refugee status in Thailand.

However, the Kayan people are forbidden Thai citizenship, and their rights are extremely limited. This leads to issues like exploitation and, in some cases, trafficking.

These days, the Kayan in Thailand live in designated villages that are dubbed authentic, but are often no more than a repeated performance put on by members of the community because they have no other choice. In 1997, the New York Times revealed some Kayan tribespeople were forced to inhabit Thaton, near the Myanmar border, and been kidnapped and subjected to sometimes fatal abuse to prevent them from leaving.

Kayan tribespeople have organised themselves through agencies to help ensure humanitarian needs are met for the refugee communities. More than 10 years later, though, the BBC reported that the UN was considering boycotts to the villages, as there were substantiated reports of refugees being refused the right to resettle outside of Thailand. This is, in part, because the villages are often settled on privately owned Thai land and are major sources of income for powerful landowners.

However, if tourists do stop arriving, what little income the Kayan are given to live off of disappears, and an even more bleak future may be in store.

According to a website that purportedly represents the Kayan people inhabiting Huay Pu Keng, They are reliant on tourists for income. Most of their income is generated from selling their woven scarfs and bags to visitors.

SEX TOURISM AND HUMAN TRAFFICKING

Go go dancers perform at a dance bar on Walking Street in Pattaya. Picture: AFP/Roberto SchmidtSource:AFP

Bangla Road. Patpong Night Market. Soi Cowboy. Walking Street in Pattaya. Thailand is flush with red-light districts, some of which are the worlds most notorious.

To be clear, we arent here to shame the workers themselves. But there are guilty parties involved on many fronts when it comes to the link between sex work and human trafficking in Thailand and most of the guilt rests with tourists themselves.

According to UNHCR, the UNs refugee agency, as of 2013 there were at least three million migrant workers in Thailand. And while a significant portion of that number is involved in Thailands fishing industry and other factory work which doesnt mean that theyre free from exploitation men, women, and children are also channelled into Thailands booming sex industry. The UN said conservative estimates put this population in the tens of thousands of victims.

Another UN agency, the Action for Cooperation Against Trafficking in Persons, says: Sex tourism continues to be a factor, fuelling the supply of trafficking victims for sexual exploitation, and at the same time corruption, limiting the progress of anti-trafficking efforts.

The situation is due, in part, to the relative wealth of Thailand in a region where its neighbours have some of the lowest GDPs in Asia. Those same countries also have histories of war and violence. While time goes on, Thailand has remained something of a beacon in the region. However, given Thailands dependence on international tourism as a huge source of revenue, theres little incentive to aggressively enforce laws against trafficking and sex work.

And in case you needed proof about the role of Western travellers as fuel for this industry, simply take a walk through Patpong Market any night of the week and take note of the languages being spoken by the patrons at the ping-pong shows and strip clubs.

ELEPHANT SANCTUARIES AND OTHER EXOTIC ANIMAL ATTRACTIONS

Thai vets tend to a sedated tiger at the Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua Tiger Temple on June 1, 2016, after a raid by wildlife authorities. Picture: Dario Pignatelli/Getty ImagesSource:Getty Images

In 2016, the happy veneer of Thailands animal-centric tourist activities was ripped right off when Thai authorities raided the once-famous Tiger Temple in the nations western Kanchanaburi province. While arguments were made that the temples monks and the staff were actually providing the 137 tigers living there with better lives than those in state-run zoos, it was the discovery of animal pelts and other products common on black markets that struck a nerve with those who heard the news. The temple was estimated to be making around US$15,000 every day, according to Al Jazeera, as tourists flocked there for pictures with seemingly docile grown tigers as well as tiger cubs. Even more, it seems, was being made from the sale of tiger body parts on the Chinese market.

Up north, in Chiang Mai, elephant rides are a popular tourist activity, though this, too, is ethically questionable. This begins with smuggling baby elephants into the country and continues with brutal training regimes in which the animals are subjected to all manner of abuse. The animals are often kept chained and otherwise confined between rides, during which they are subject to often indelicate treatment by mahouts. This is to say nothing of family syndicates that control the smuggling of elephants and who intimidate those working to improve the lives of animals in captivity.

You should do a substantial amount of research before you visit any animal-related destination in Thailand, as even those that have chosen to designate themselves as sanctuaries may be that in name only. Opt for animal encounters that take part in rehabilitation of wildlife or formerly abused animals for something that puts you in touch with nature without doing it harm. These include Elephant Nature Park and Boon Lotts Elephant Sanctuary. Just to be clear, you wont be riding the elephants in either of these venues thats a practice you should avoid if youre looking to actually help these creatures have better lives.

SHOULD YOU STILL VISIT?

All that said, it really is an incredible country. Picture: iStockSource:istock

Our resounding answer is yes, you should absolutely visit Thailand. But, expectations need to be managed and you need to exercise some smarts.

The days of Thailand as a blissed-out bohemian tourist wonderland are essentially finished. Almost all of the previously untouched, gorgeous corners of the nation have been gulped up by the tourism machine, meaning that unless youre willing to go way outside of the tourist track, youll encounter touts selling elephant rides, blocks of shops slinging identical souvenirs, men and women selling sex, and plenty of offers for illegal drugs.

To be fair, amid all of that is a centuries-old Buddhist tradition, locals willing to share their culture, amazing street culture, and all manner of gorgeous natural scenery.

It would be a mistake to pass over Thailand on the whole. Nearly every nation on earth has its thorny ethical issues to contend with and we arent saying that the world is universally safe, but in places like Thailand, a little research and some street smarts will go a long way toward making sure your next trip there is as flawless as possible.

Related links:

Where to go in Thailand: A complete guide to the most popular destinations

Bangkok travel guide

The best itinerary for Thailand

This article originally appeared on oyster.com.au.

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The dark side of tourism in Thailand - NEWS.com.au

How America Lost Its Mind – The Atlantic

You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan

We risk being the first people in history to have been able to make their illusions so vivid, so persuasive, so realistic that they can live in them.

Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961)

When did America become untethered from reality?

I first noticed our national lurch toward fantasy in 2004, after President George W. Bushs political mastermind, Karl Rove, came up with the remarkable phrase reality-based community. People in the reality-based community, he told a reporter, believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality Thats not the way the world really works anymore. A year later, The Colbert Report went on the air. In the first few minutes of the first episode, Stephen Colbert, playing his right-wing-populist commentator character, performed a feature called The Word. His first selection: truthiness. Now, Im sure some of the word police, the wordinistas over at Websters, are gonna say, Hey, thats not a word! Well, anybody who knows me knows that Im no fan of dictionaries or reference books. Theyre elitist. Constantly telling us what is or isnt true. Or what did or didnt happen. Whos Britannica to tell me the Panama Canal was finished in 1914? If I wanna say it happened in 1941, thats my right. I dont trust bookstheyre all fact, no heart Face it, folks, we are a divided nation divided between those who think with their head and those who know with their heart Because thats where the truth comes from, ladies and gentlementhe gut.

Whoa, yes, I thought: exactly. America had changed since I was young, when truthiness and reality-based community wouldnt have made any sense as jokes. For all the fun, and all the many salutary effects of the 1960sthe main decade of my childhoodI saw that those years had also been the big-bang moment for truthiness. And if the 60s amounted to a national nervous breakdown, we are probably mistaken to consider ourselves over it.

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Each of us is on a spectrum somewhere between the poles of rational and irrational. We all have hunches we cant prove and superstitions that make no sense. Some of my best friends are very religious, and others believe in dubious conspiracy theories. Whats problematic is going overboardletting the subjective entirely override the objective; thinking and acting as if opinions and feelings are just as true as facts. The American experiment, the original embodiment of the great Enlightenment idea of intellectual freedom, whereby every individual is welcome to believe anything she wishes, has metastasized out of control. From the start, our ultra-individualism was attached to epic dreams, sometimes epic fantasiesevery American one of Gods chosen people building a custom-made utopia, all of us free to reinvent ourselves by imagination and will. In America nowadays, those more exciting parts of the Enlightenment idea have swamped the sober, rational, empirical parts. Little by little for centuries, then more and more and faster and faster during the past half century, we Americans have given ourselves over to all kinds of magical thinking, anything-goes relativism, and belief in fanciful explanationsmall and large fantasies that console or thrill or terrify us. And most of us havent realized how far-reaching our strange new normal has become.

Much more than the other billion or so people in the developed world, we Americans believereally believein the supernatural and the miraculous, in Satan on Earth, in reports of recent trips to and from heaven, and in a story of lifes instantaneous creation several thousand years ago.

We believe that the government and its co-conspirators are hiding all sorts of monstrous and shocking truths from us, concerning assassinations, extraterrestrials, the genesis of aids, the 9/11 attacks, the dangers of vaccines, and so much more.

And this was all true before we became familiar with the terms post-factual and post-truth, before we elected a president with an astoundingly open mind about conspiracy theories, whats true and whats false, the nature of reality.

We have passed through the looking glass and down the rabbit hole. America has mutated into Fantasyland.

How widespread is this promiscuous devotion to the untrue? How many Americans now inhabit alternate realities? Any given survey of beliefs is only a sketch of what people in general really think. But reams of survey research from the past 20 years reveal a rough, useful census of American credulity and delusion. By my reckoning, the solidly reality-based are a minority, maybe a third of us but almost certainly fewer than half. Only a third of us, for instance, dont believe that the tale of creation in Genesis is the word of God. Only a third strongly disbelieve in telepathy and ghosts. Two-thirds of Americans believe that angels and demons are active in the world. More than half say theyre absolutely certain heaven exists, and just as many are sure of the existence of a personal Godnot a vague force or universal spirit or higher power, but some guy. A third of us believe not only that global warming is no big deal but that its a hoax perpetrated by scientists, the government, and journalists. A third believe that our earliest ancestors were humans just like us; that the government has, in league with the pharmaceutical industry, hidden evidence of natural cancer cures; that extraterrestrials have visited or are visiting Earth. Almost a quarter believe that vaccines cause autism, and that Donald Trump won the popular vote in 2016. A quarter believe that our previous president maybe or definitely was (or is?) the anti-Christ. According to a survey by Public Policy Polling, 15 percent believe that the media or the government adds secret mind-controlling technology to television broadcast signals, and another 15 percent think thats possible. A quarter of Americans believe in witches. Remarkably, the same fraction, or maybe less, believes that the Bible consists mainly of legends and fablesthe same proportion that believes U.S. officials were complicit in the 9/11 attacks.

When I say that a third believe X and a quarter believe Y, its important to understand that those are different thirds and quarters of the population. Of course, various fantasy constituencies overlap and feed one anotherfor instance, belief in extraterrestrial visitation and abduction can lead to belief in vast government cover-ups, which can lead to belief in still more wide-ranging plots and cabals, which can jibe with a belief in an impending Armageddon.

Why are we like this?

The short answer is because were Americansbecause being American means we can believe anything we want; that our beliefs are equal or superior to anyone elses, experts be damned. Once people commit to that approach, the world turns inside out, and no cause-and-effect connection is fixed. The credible becomes incredible and the incredible credible.

The word mainstream has recently become a pejorative, shorthand for bias, lies, oppression by the elites. Yet the institutions and forces that once kept us from indulging the flagrantly untrue or absurdmedia, academia, government, corporate America, professional associations, respectable opinion in the aggregatehave enabled and encouraged every species of fantasy over the past few decades.

A senior physician at one of Americas most prestigious university hospitals promotes miracle cures on his daily TV show. Cable channels air documentaries treating mermaids, monsters, ghosts, and angels as real. When a political-science professor attacks the idea that there is some public that shares a notion of reality, a concept of reason, and a set of criteria by which claims to reason and rationality are judged, colleagues just nod and grant tenure. The old fringes have been folded into the new center. The irrational has become respectable and often unstoppable.

Our whole social environment and each of its overlapping partscultural, religious, political, intellectual, psychologicalhave become conducive to spectacular fallacy and truthiness and make-believe. There are many slippery slopes, leading in various directions to other exciting nonsense. During the past several decades, those naturally slippery slopes have been turned into a colossal and permanent complex of interconnected, crisscrossing bobsled tracks, which Donald Trump slid down right into the White House.

American moxie has always come in two types. We have our wilder, faster, looser side: Were overexcited gamblers with a weakness for stories too good to be true. But we also have the virtues embodied by the Puritans and their secular descendants: steadiness, hard work, frugality, sobriety, and common sense. A propensity to dream impossible dreams is like other powerful tendenciesokay when kept in check. For most of our history, the impulses existed in a rough balance, a dynamic equilibrium between fantasy and reality, mania and moderation, credulity and skepticism.

The great unbalancing and descent into full Fantasyland was the product of two momentous changes. The first was a profound shift in thinking that swelled up in the 60s; since then, Americans have had a new rule written into their mental operating systems: Do your own thing, find your own reality, its all relative.

The second change was the onset of the new era of information. Digital technology empowers real-seeming fictions of the ideological and religious and scientific kinds. Among the webs 1 billion sites, believers in anything and everything can find thousands of fellow fantasists, with collages of facts and facts to support them. Before the internet, crackpots were mostly isolated, and surely had a harder time remaining convinced of their alternate realities. Now their devoutly believed opinions are all over the airwaves and the web, just like actual news. Now all of the fantasies look real.

Today, each of us is freer than ever to custom-make reality, to believe whatever and pretend to be whoever we wish. Which makes all the lines between actual and fictional blur and disappear more easily. Truth in general becomes flexible, personal, subjective. And we like this new ultra-freedom, insist on it, even as we fear and loathe the ways so many of our wrongheaded fellow Americans use it.

Treating real life as fantasy and vice versa, and taking preposterous ideas seriously, is not unique to Americans. But we are the global crucible and epicenter. We invented the fantasy-industrial complex; almost nowhere outside poor or otherwise miserable countries are flamboyant supernatural beliefs so central to the identities of so many people. This is American exceptionalism in the 21st century. The country has always been a one-of-a-kind place. But our singularity is different now. Were still rich and free, still more influential and powerful than any other nation, practically a synonym for developed country. But our drift toward credulity, toward doing our own thing, toward denying facts and having an altogether uncertain grip on reality, has overwhelmed our other exceptional national traits and turned us into a less developed country.

People see our shocking Trump momentthis post-truth, alternative facts momentas some inexplicable and crazy new American phenomenon. But whats happening is just the ultimate extrapolation and expression of mind-sets that have made America exceptional for its entire history.

America was created by true believers and passionate dreamers, and by hucksters and their suckers, which made America successfulbut also by a people uniquely susceptible to fantasy, as epitomized by everything from Salems hunting witches to Joseph Smiths creating Mormonism, from P. T. Barnum to speaking in tongues, from Hollywood to Scientology to conspiracy theories, from Walt Disney to Billy Graham to Ronald Reagan to Oprah Winfrey to Trump. In other words: Mix epic individualism with extreme religion; mix show business with everything else; let all that ferment for a few centuries; then run it through the anything-goes 60s and the internet age. The result is the America we inhabit today, with reality and fantasy weirdly and dangerously blurred and commingled.

I dont regret or disapprove of many of the ways the 60s permanently reordered American society and culture. Its just that along with the familiar benefits, there have been unreckoned costs.

In 1962, people started referring to hippies, the Beatles had their first hit, Ken Kesey published One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, and the Harvard psychology lecturer Timothy Leary was handing out psilocybin and LSD to grad students. And three hours south of San Francisco, on the heavenly stretch of coastal cliffs known as Big Sur, a pair of young Stanford psychology graduates founded a school and think tank they named after a small American Indian tribe that had lived on the grounds long before. In 1968, one of its founding figures recalled four decades later,

This is not overstatement. Essentially everything that became known as New Age was invented, developed, or popularized at the Esalen Institute. Esalen is a mother church of a new American religion for people who think they dont like churches or religions but who still want to believe in the supernatural. The institute wholly reinvented psychology, medicine, and philosophy, driven by a suspicion of science and reason and an embrace of magical thinking (also: massage, hot baths, sex, and sex in hot baths). It was a headquarters for a new religion of no religion, and for science containing next to no science. The idea was to be radically tolerant of therapeutic approaches and understandings of reality, especially if they came from Asian traditions or from American Indian or other shamanistic traditions. Invisible energies, past lives, astral projection, whateverthe more exotic and wondrous and unfalsifiable, the better.

Not long before Esalen was founded, one of its co-founders, Dick Price, had suffered a mental breakdown and been involuntarily committed to a private psychiatric hospital for a year. His new institute embraced the radical notion that psychosis and other mental illnesses were labels imposed by the straight world on eccentrics and visionaries, that they were primarily tools of coercion and control. This was the big idea behind One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, of course. And within the psychiatric profession itself this idea had two influential proponents, who each published unorthodox manifestos at the beginning of the decadeR. D. Laing (The Divided Self) and Thomas Szasz (The Myth of Mental Illness). Madness, Laing wrote when Esalen was new, is potentially liberation and renewal. Esalens founders were big Laing fans, and the institute became a hotbed for the idea that insanity was just an alternative way of perceiving reality.

These influential critiques helped make popular and respectable the idea that much of science is a sinister scheme concocted by a despotic conspiracy to oppress people. Mental illness, both Szasz and Laing said, is a theory not a fact. This is now the universal bottom-line argument for anyonefrom creationists to climate-change deniers to anti-vaccine hystericswho prefers to disregard science in favor of his own beliefs.

You know how young people always think the universe revolves around them, as if theyre the only ones who really get it? And how before their frontal lobes, the neural seat of reason and rationality, are fully wired, they can be especially prone to fantasy? In the 60s, the universe cooperated: It did seem to revolve around young people, affirming their adolescent self-regard, making their fantasies of importance feel real and their fantasies of instant transformation and revolution feel plausible. Practically overnight, America turned its full attention to the young and everything they believed and imagined and wished.

If 1962 was when the decade really got going, 1969 was the year the new doctrines and their gravity were definitively cataloged by the grown-ups. Reason and rationality were over. The countercultural effusions were freaking out the old guard, including religious people who couldnt quite see that yet another Great Awakening was under way in America, heaving up a new religion of believers who have no option but to follow the road until they reach the Holy City that lies beyond the technocracy the New Jerusalem. That line is from The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition, published three weeks after Woodstock, in the summer of 1969. Its author was Theodore Roszak, age 35, a Bay Area professor who thereby coined the word counterculture. Roszak spends 270 pages glorying in the younger generations brave rejection of expertise and all that our culture values as reason and reality. (Note the scare quotes.) So-called experts, after all, are on the payroll of the state and/or corporate structure. A chapter called The Myth of Objective Consciousness argues that science is really just a state religion. To create a new culture in which the non-intellective capacities become the arbiters of the good [and] the true, he writes, nothing less is required than the subversion of the scientific world view, with its entrenched commitment to an egocentric and cerebral mode of consciousness. He welcomes the radical rejection of science and technological values.

Earlier that summer, a University of Chicago sociologist (and Catholic priest) named Andrew Greeley had alerted readers of The New York Times Magazine that beyond the familiar signifiers of youthful rebellion (long hair, sex, drugs, music, protests), the truly shocking change on campuses was the rise of anti-rationalism and a return of the sacredmysticism and magic, the occult, sances, cults based on the book of Revelation. When hed chalked a statistical table on a classroom blackboard, one of his students had reacted with horror: Mr. Greeley, I think youre an empiricist.

As 1969 turned to 1970, a 41-year-old Yale Law School professor was finishing his book about the new youth counterculture. Charles Reich was a former Supreme Court clerk now tenured at one of ultra-rationalisms American headquarters. But hanging with the young people had led him to a midlife epiphany and apostasy. In 1966, he had started teaching an undergraduate seminar called The Individual in America, for which he assigned fiction by Kesey and Norman Mailer. He decided to spend the next summer, the Summer of Love, in Berkeley. On the road back to New Haven, he had his Pauline conversion to the kids values. His class at Yale became hugely popular; at its peak, 600 students were enrolled. In 1970, The Greening of America became The New York Times best-selling book (as well as a much-read 70-page New Yorker excerpt), and remained on the list for most of a year.

At 16, I bought and read one of the 2 million copies sold. Rereading it today and recalling how much I loved it was a stark reminder of the follies of youth. Reich was shamelessly, uncritically swooning for kids like me. The Greening of America may have been the mainstreams single greatest act of pandering to the vanity and self-righteousness of the new youth. Its underlying theoretical scheme was simple and perfectly pitched to flatter young readers: There are three types of American consciousness, each of which makes up an individuals perception of reality his head, his way of life. Consciousness I people were old-fashioned, self-reliant individualists rendered obsolete by the new Corporate Stateessentially, your grandparents. Consciousness IIs were the fearful and conformist organization men and women whose rationalism was a tyrannizing trap laid by the Corporate Stateyour parents.

And then there was Consciousness III, which had made its first appearance among the youth of America, spreading rapidly among wider and wider segments of youth, and by degrees to older people. If you opposed the Vietnam War and dressed down and smoked pot, you were almost certainly a III. Simply by being young and casual and undisciplined, you were ushering in a new utopia.

Reich praises the gaiety and humor of the new Consciousness III wardrobe, but his book is absolutely humorlessbecause its a response to this moment of utmost sterility, darkest night and most extreme peril. Conspiracism was flourishing, and Reich bought in. Now that the Corporate State has added depersonalization and repression to its other injustices, it has threatened to destroy all meaning and suck all joy from life. Reichs magical thinking mainly concerned how the revolution would turn out. The American Corporate State, having produced this new generation of longhaired hyperindividualists who insist on trusting their gut and finding their own truth, is now accomplishing what no revolutionaries could accomplish by themselves. The machine has begun to destroy itself. Once everyone wears Levis and gets high, the old ways will simply be swept away in the flood.

The inevitable/imminent happy-cataclysm part of the dream didnt happen, of course. The machine did not destroy itself. But Reich was half-right. An epochal change in American thinking was under way and not, as far as anybody knows, reversible There is no returning to an earlier consciousness. His wishful error was believing that once the tidal surge of new sensibility brought down the flood walls, the waters would flow in only one direction, carving out a peaceful, cooperative, groovy new continental utopia, hearts and minds changed like his, all of America Berkeleyized and Vermontified. Instead, Consciousness III was just one early iteration of the anything-goes, post-reason, post-factual America enabled by the tsunami. Reichs faith was the converse of the Enlightenment rationalists hopeful fallacy 200 years earlier. Granted complete freedom of thought, Thomas Jefferson and company assumed, most people would follow the path of reason. Wasnt it pretty to think so.

I remember when fantastical beliefs went fully mainstream, in the 1970s. My irreligious mother bought and read The Secret Life of Plants, a big best seller arguing that plants were sentient and would be the bridesmaids at a marriage of physics and metaphysics. The amazing truth about plants, the book claimed, had been suppressed by the FDA and agribusiness. My mom didnt believe in the conspiracy, but she did start talking to her ficuses as if they were pets. In a review, The New York Times registered the book as another data point in how the incredible is losing its pariah status. Indeed, mainstream publishers and media organizations were falling over themselves to promote and sell fantasies as nonfiction. In 1975 came a sensational autobiography by the young spoon bender and mind reader Uri Geller as well as Life After Life, by Raymond Moody, a philosophy Ph.D. who presented the anecdotes of several dozen people whod nearly died as evidence of an afterlife. The book sold many millions of copies; before long the International Association for Near Death Studies formed and held its first conference, at Yale.

During the 60s, large swaths of academia made a turn away from reason and rationalism as theyd been understood. Many of the pioneers were thoughtful, their work fine antidotes to postwar complacency. The problem was the nature and extent of their influence at that particular time, when all premises and paradigms seemed up for grabs. That is, they inspired half-baked and perverse followers in the academy, whose arguments filtered out into the world at large: All approximations of truth, science as much as any fable or religion, are mere stories devised to serve peoples needs or interests. Reality itself is a purely social construction, a tableau of useful or wishful myths that members of a society or tribe have been persuaded to believe. The borders between fiction and nonfiction are permeable, maybe nonexistent. The delusions of the insane, superstitions, and magical thinking? Any of those may be as legitimate as the supposed truths contrived by Western reason and science. The takeaway: Believe whatever you want, because pretty much everything is equally true and false.

These ideas percolated across multiple academic fields. In 1965, the French philosopher Michel Foucault published Madness and Civilization in America, echoing Laings skepticism of the concept of mental illness; by the 1970s, he was arguing that rationality itself is a coercive regime of truthoppression by other means. Foucaults suspicion of reason became deeply and widely embedded in American academia.

Meanwhile, over in sociology, in 1966 a pair of professors published The Social Construction of Reality, one of the most influential works in their field. Not only were sanity and insanity and scientific truth somewhat dubious concoctions by elites, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann explainedso was everything else. The rulers of any tribe or society do not just dictate customs and laws; they are the masters of everyones perceptions, defining reality itself. To create the all-encompassing stage sets that everyone inhabits, rulers first use crude mythology, then more elaborate religion, and finally the extreme step of modern science. Reality? Knowledge? If we were going to be meticulous, Berger and Luckmann wrote, we would put quotation marks around the two aforementioned terms every time we used them. What is real to a Tibetan monk may not be real to an American businessman.

When I first read that, at age 18, I loved the quotation marks. If reality is simply the result of rules written by the powers that be, then isnt everyone ableno, isnt everyone obligedto construct their own reality? The book was timed perfectly to become a foundational text in academia and beyond.

A more extreme academic evangelist for the idea of all truths being equal was a UC Berkeley philosophy professor named Paul Feyerabend. His best-known book, published in 1975, was Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge. Rationalism, it declared, is a secularized form of the belief in the power of the word of God, and science a particular superstition. In a later edition of the book, published when creationists were passing laws to teach Genesis in public-school biology classes, Feyerabend came out in favor of the practice, comparing creationists to Galileo. Science, he insisted, is just another form of belief. Only one principle, he wrote, can be defended under all circumstances and in all stages of human development. It is the principle: anything goes.

Over in anthropology, where the exotic magical beliefs of traditional cultures were a main subject, the new paradigm took over completelydont judge, dont disbelieve, dont point your professorial finger. This was understandable, given the times: colonialism ending, genocide of American Indians confessed, U.S. wars in the developing world. Who were we to roll our eyes or deny what these people believed? In the 60s, anthropology decided that oracles, diviners, incantations, and magical objects should be not just respected, but considered equivalent to reason and science. If all understandings of reality are socially constructed, those of Kalabari tribesmen in Nigeria are no more arbitrary or faith-based than those of college professors.

In 1968, a UC Davis psychologist named Charles Tart conducted an experiment in which, he wrote, a young woman who frequently had spontaneous out-of-body experiencesdidnt claim to have them but had themspent four nights sleeping in a lab, hooked up to an EEG machine. Her assigned task was to send her mind or soul out of her body while she was asleep and read a five-digit number Tart had written on a piece of paper placed on a shelf above the bed. He reported that she succeeded. Other scientists considered the experiments and the results bogus, but Tart proceeded to devote his academic career to proving that attempts at objectivity are a sham and magic is real. In an extraordinary paper published in 1972 in Science, he complained about the scientific establishments almost total rejection of the knowledge gained while high or tripping. He didnt just want science to take seriously experiences of ecstasy, mystical union, other dimensions, rapture, beauty, space-and-time transcendence. He was explicitly dedicated to going there. A perfectly scientific theory may be based on data that have no physical existence, he insisted. The rules of the scientific method had to be revised. To work as a psychologist in the new era, Tart argued, a researcher should be in the altered state of consciousness hes studying, high or delusional at the time of data collection or during data reduction and theorizing. Tarts new mode of research, he admitted, posed problems of consensual validation, given that only observers in the same [altered state] are able to communicate adequately with one another. Tart popularized the term consensus reality for what you or I would simply call reality, and around 1970 that became a permanent interdisciplinary term of art in academia. Later he abandoned the pretense of neutrality and started calling it the consensus trancepeople committed to reason and rationality were the deluded dupes, not he and his tribe.

Even the social critic Paul Goodman, beloved by young leftists in the 60s, was flabbergasted by his own students by 1969. There was no knowledge, he wrote, only the sociology of knowledge. They had so well learned that research is subsidized and conducted for the benefit of the ruling class that they did not believe there was such a thing as simple truth.

Ever since, the American right has insistently decried the spread of relativism, the idea that nothing is any more correct or true than anything else. Conservatives hated how relativism undercut various venerable and comfortable ruling ideascertain notions of entitlement (according to race and gender) and aesthetic beauty and metaphysical and moral certainty. Yet once the intellectual mainstream thoroughly accepted that there are many equally valid realities and truths, once the idea of gates and gatekeeping was discredited not just on campuses but throughout the culture, all American barbarians could have their claims taken seriously. Conservatives are correct that the anything-goes relativism of college campuses wasnt sequestered there, but when it flowed out across America it helped enable extreme Christianities and lunacies on the rightgun-rights hysteria, black-helicopter conspiracism, climate-change denial, and more. The term useful idiot was originally deployed to accuse liberals of serving the interests of true believers further on the left. In this instance, however, postmodern intellectualspost-positivists, poststructuralists, social constructivists, post-empiricists, epistemic relativists, cognitive relativists, descriptive relativiststurned out to be useful idiots most consequentially for the American right. Reality has a well-known liberal bias, Stephen Colbert once said, in character, mocking the beliefs-trump-facts impulse of todays right. Neither side has noticed, but large factions of the elite left and the populist right have been on the same team.

As the Vietnam War escalated and careened, antirationalism flowered. In his book about the remarkable protests in Washington, D.C., in the fall of 1967, The Armies of the Night, Norman Mailer describes chants (Out demons, outback to darkness, ye servants of Satan!) and a circle of hundreds of protesters intending to form a ring of exorcism sufficiently powerful to raise the Pentagon three hundred feet. They were hoping the building would turn orange and vibrate until all evil emissions had fled this levitation. At that point the war in Vietnam would end.

By the end of the 60s, plenty of zealots on the left were engaged in extreme magical thinking. They hadnt started the decade that way. In 1962, Students for a Democratic Society adopted its founding document, drafted by 22-year-old Tom Hayden. The manifesto is sweet and reasonable: decrying inequality and poverty and the pervasiveness of racism in American life, seeing the potential benefits as well as the downsides of industrial automation, declaring the group in basic opposition to the communist system.

Then, kaboom, the big bang. Anything and everything became believable. Reason was chucked. Dystopian and utopian fantasies seemed plausible. In 1969, the SDSs most apocalyptic and charismatic faction, calling itself Weatherman, split off and got all the attention. Its members believed that they and other young white Americans, aligned with black insurgents, would be the vanguard in a new civil war. They issued statements about the need for armed struggle as the only road to revolution and how dope is one of our weapons Guns and grass are united in the youth underground. And then factions of the new left went to work making and setting off thousands of bombs in the early 1970s.

Left-wingers werent the only ones who became unhinged. Officials at the FBI, the CIA, and military intelligence agencies, as well as in urban police departments, convinced themselves that peaceful antiwar protesters and campus lefties in general were dangerous militants, and expanded secret programs to spy on, infiltrate, and besmirch their organizations. Which thereby validated the preexisting paranoia on the new left and encouraged its wing nuts revolutionary delusions. In the 70s, the CIA and Army intelligence set up their infamous Project Star Gate to see whether they could conduct espionage by means of ESP.

The far right had its own glorious 60s moment, in the form of the new John Birch Society, whose founders believed that both Republican and Democratic presidential Cabinets included conscious, deliberate, dedicated agent[s] of the Soviet conspiracy determined to create a world-wide police state, absolutely and brutally governed from the Kremlin, as the societys founder, Robert Welch, put it in a letter to friends.

This furiously, elaborately suspicious way of understanding the world started spreading across the political spectrum after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963. Dallas couldnt have been the work of just one nutty loser with a mail-order rifle, could it have? Surely the Communists or the CIA or the Birchers or the Mafia or some conspiratorial combination must have arranged it all, right? The shift in thinking didnt register immediately. In his influential book The Paranoid Style in American Politics, published two years after the presidents murder, Richard Hofstadter devoted only two sentences and a footnote to it, observing that conspiratorial explanations of Kennedys assassination dont have much currency in the United States.

Elaborate paranoia was an established tic of the Bircherite far right, but the left needed a little time to catch up. In 1964, a left-wing American writer published the first book about a JFK conspiracy, claiming that a Texas oilman had been the mastermind, and soon many books were arguing that the official government inquiry had ignored the hidden conspiracies. One of them, Rush to Judgment, by Mark Lane, a lawyer on the left, was a New York Times best seller for six months. Then, in 1967, New Orleanss district attorney, Jim Garrison, indicted a local businessman for being part of a conspiracy of gay right-wingers to assassinate Kennedya Nazi operation, whose sponsors include some of the oil-rich millionaires in Texas, according to Garrison, with the CIA, FBI, and Robert F. Kennedy complicit in the cover-up. After NBC News broadcast an investigation discrediting the theory, Garrison said the TV segment was a piece of thought control, obviously commissioned by NBCs parent company RCA, one of the top 10 defense contractors and thus desperate because we are in the process of uncovering their hoax.

The notion of an immense and awful JFK-assassination conspiracy became conventional wisdom in America. As a result, more Americans than ever became reflexive conspiracy theorists. Thomas Pynchons novel Gravitys Rainbow, a complicated global fantasy about the interconnections among militarists and Illuminati and stoners, and the validity of paranoid thinking, won the 1974 National Book Award. Conspiracy became the high-end Hollywood dramatic premiseChinatown, The Conversation, The Parallax View, and Three Days of the Condor came out in the same two-year period. Of course, real life made such stories plausible. The infiltration by the FBI and intelligence agencies of left-wing groups was then being revealed, and the Watergate break-in and its cover-up were an actual criminal conspiracy. Within a few decades, the belief that a web of villainous elites was covertly seeking to impose a malevolent global regime made its way from the lunatic right to the mainstream. Delusional conspiracism wouldnt spread quite as widely or as deeply on the left, but more and more people on both sides would come to believe that an extraordinarily powerful cabalinternational organizations and think tanks and big businesses and politicianssecretly ran America.

Each camp, conspiracists on the right and on the left, was ostensibly the enemy of the other, but they began operating as de facto allies. Relativist professors enabled science-denying Christians, and the antipsychiatry craze in the 60s appealed simultaneously to left-wingers and libertarians (as well as to Scientologists). Conspiracy theories were more of a modern right-wing habit before people on the left signed on. However, the belief that the federal government had secret plans to open detention camps for dissidents sprouted in the 70s on the paranoid left before it became a fixture on the right.

Americans felt newly entitled to believe absolutely anything. Im pretty certain that the unprecedented surge of UFO reports in the 70s was not evidence of extraterrestrials increasing presence but a symptom of Americans credulity and magical thinking suddenly unloosed. We wanted to believe in extraterrestrials, so we did. What made the UFO mania historically significant rather than just amusing, however, was the web of elaborate stories that were now being spun: not just of sightings but of landings and abductionsand of government cover-ups and secret alliances with interplanetary beings. Those earnest beliefs planted more seeds for the extravagant American conspiracy thinking that by the turn of the century would be rampant and seriously toxic.

A single ide fixe like this often appears in both frightened and hopeful versions. That was true of the suddenly booming belief in alien visitors, which tended toward the sanguine as the 60s turned into the 70s, even in fictional depictions. Consider the extraterrestrials that Jack Nicholsons character in Easy Rider earnestly describes as hes getting high for the first time, and those at the center of Close Encounters of the Third Kind eight years later. One evening in southern Georgia in 1969, the year Easy Rider came out, a failed gubernatorial candidate named Jimmy Carter saw a moving moon-size white light in the sky that didnt have any solid substance to it and got closer and closer, stopped, turned blue, then red and back to white, and then zoomed away.

The first big nonfiction abduction tale appeared around the same time, in a best-selling book about a married couple in New Hampshire who believed that while driving their Chevy sedan late one night, they saw a bright object in the sky that the wife, a UFO buff already, figured might be a spacecraft. She began having nightmares about being abducted by aliens, and both of them underwent hypnosis. The details of the abducting aliens and their spacecraft that each described were different, and changed over time. The mans hypnotized description of the aliens bore an uncanny resemblance to the ones in an episode of The Outer Limits broadcast on ABC just before his hypnosis session. Thereafter, hypnosis became the standard way for people who believed that they had been abducted (or that they had past lives, or that they were the victims of satanic abuse) to recall the supposed experience. And the couples story established the standard abduction-tale format: Humanoid creatures take you aboard a spacecraft, communicate telepathically or in spoken English, medically examine you by inserting long needles into you, then let you go.

The husband and wife were undoubtedly sincere believers. The sincerely credulous are perfect suckers, and in the late 60s, a convicted thief and embezzler named Erich von Dniken published Chariots of the Gods?, positing that extraterrestrials helped build the Egyptian pyramids, Stonehenge, and the giant stone heads on Easter Island. That book and its many sequels sold tens of millions of copies, and the documentary based on it had a huge box-office take in 1970. Americans were ready to believe von Dnikens fantasy to a degree they simply wouldnt have been a decade earlier, before the 60s sea change. Certainly a decade earlier NBC wouldnt have aired an hour-long version of the documentary in prime time. And while Im at it: Until wed passed through the 60s and half of the 70s, Im pretty sure we wouldnt have given the presidency to some dude, especially a born-again Christian, who said hed recently seen a huge, color-shifting, luminescent UFO hovering near him.

By the 1980s, things appeared to have returned more or less to normal. Civil rights seemed like a done deal, the war in Vietnam was over, young people were no longer telling grown-ups they were worthless because they were grown-ups. Revolution did not loom. Sex and drugs and rock and roll were regular parts of life. Starting in the 80s, loving America and making money and having a family were no longer unfashionable.

The sense of cultural and political upheaval and chaos dissipatedwhich lulled us into ignoring all the ways that everything had changed, that Fantasyland was now scaling and spreading and becoming the new normal. What had seemed strange and amazing in 1967 or 1972 became normal and ubiquitous.

Extreme religious and quasi-religious beliefs and practices, Christian and New Age and otherwise, didnt subside, but grew and thrivedand came to seem unexceptional.

Relativism became entrenched in academiatenured, you could say. Michel Foucaults rival Jean Baudrillard became a celebrity among American intellectuals by declaring that rationalism was a tool of oppressors that no longer worked as a way of understanding the world, pointless and doomed. In other words, as he wrote in 1986, the secret of theorythis whole intellectual realm now called itself simply theoryis that truth does not exist.

This kind of thinking was by no means limited to the ivory tower. The intellectuals new outlook was as much a product as a cause of the smog of subjectivity that now hung thick over the whole American mindscape. After the 60s, truth was relative, criticizing was equal to victimizing, individual liberty became absolute, and everyone was permitted to believe or disbelieve whatever they wished. The distinction between opinion and fact was crumbling on many fronts.

Belief in gigantic secret conspiracies thrived, ranging from the highly improbable to the impossible, and moved from the crackpot periphery to the mainstream.

Many Americans announced that theyd experienced fantastic horrors and adventures, abuse by Satanists, and abduction by extraterrestrials, and their claims began to be taken seriously. Parts of the establishmentpsychology and psychiatry, academia, religion, law enforcementencouraged people to believe that all sorts of imaginary traumas were real.

America didnt seem as weird and crazy as it had around 1970. But thats because Americans had stopped noticing the weirdness and craziness. We had defined every sort of deviancy down. And as the cultural critic Neil Postman put it in his 1985 jeremiad about how TV was replacing meaningful public discourse with entertainment, we were in the process of amusing ourselves to death.

The Reagan presidency was famously a triumph of truthiness and entertainment, and in the 1990s, as problematically batty beliefs kept going mainstream, presidential politics continued merging with the fantasy-industrial complex.

In 1998, as soon as we learned that President Bill Clinton had been fellated by an intern in the West Wing, his popularity spiked. Which was baffling only to those who still thought of politics as an autonomous realm, existing apart from entertainment. American politics happened on television; it was a TV series, a reality show just before TV became glutted with reality shows. A titillating new story line that goosed the ratings of an existing series was an established scripted-TV gimmick. The audience had started getting bored with The Clinton Administration, but the Monica Lewinsky subplot got people interested again.

Just before the Clintons arrived in Washington, the right had managed to do away with the federal Fairness Doctrine, which had been enacted to keep radio and TV shows from being ideologically one-sided. Until then, big-time conservative opinion media had consisted of two magazines, William F. Buckley Jr.s biweekly National Review and the monthly American Spectator, both with small circulations. But absent a Fairness Doctrine, Rush Limbaughs national right-wing radio show, launched in 1988, was free to thrive, and others promptly appeared.

For most of the 20th century, national news media had felt obliged to pursue and present some rough approximation of the truth rather than to promote a truth, let alone fictions. With the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine, a new American laissez-faire had been officially declared. If lots more incorrect and preposterous assertions circulated in our mass media, that was a price of freedom. If splenetic commentators could now, as never before, keep believers perpetually riled up and feeling the excitement of being in a mob, so be it.

Limbaughs virtuosic three hours of daily talk started bringing a sociopolitical alternate reality to a huge national audience. Instead of relying on an occasional magazine or newsletter to confirm your gnarly view of the world, now you had talk radio drilling it into your head for hours every day. As Limbaughs show took off, in 1992 the producer Roger Ailes created a syndicated TV show around him. Four years later, when NBC hired someone else to launch a cable news channel, Ailes, who had been working at NBC, quit and created one with Rupert Murdoch.

Fox News brought the Limbaughvian talk-radio version of the world to national TV, offering viewers an unending and immersive propaganda experience of a kind that had never existed before.

For Americans, this was a new condition. Over the course of the century, electronic mass media had come to serve an important democratic function: presenting Americans with a single shared set of facts. Now TV and radio were enabling a reversion to the narrower, factional, partisan discourse that had been normal in Americas earlier centuries.

And there was also the internet, which eventually would have mooted the Fairness Doctrine anyhow. In 1994, the first modern spam message was sent, visible to everyone on Usenet: global alert for all: jesus is coming soon. Over the next year or two, the masses learned of the World Wide Web. The tinder had been gathered and stacked since the 60s, and now the match was lit and thrown. After the 60s and 70s happened as they happened, the internet may have broken Americas dynamic balance between rational thinking and magical thinking for good.

Before the web, cockamamy ideas and outright falsehoods could not spread nearly as fast or as widely, so it was much easier for reason and reasonableness to prevail. Before the web, institutionalizing any one alternate reality required the long, hard work of hundreds of full-time militants. In the digital age, however, every tribe and fiefdom and principality and region of Fantasylandevery screwball with a computer and an internet connectionsuddenly had an unprecedented way to instruct and rile up and mobilize believers, and to recruit more. False beliefs were rendered both more real-seeming and more contagious, creating a kind of fantasy cascade in which millions of bedoozled Americans surfed and swam.

Why did Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan begin remarking frequently during the 80s and 90s that people were entitled to their own opinions but not to their own facts? Because until then, that had not been necessary to say. Our marketplace of ideas became exponentially bigger and freer than ever, its true. Thomas Jefferson said that hed rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of itbecause in the new United States, reason is left free to combat every sort of error of opinion. However, I think if he and our other Enlightenment forefathers returned, they would see the present state of affairs as too much of a good thing. Reason remains free to combat unreason, but the internet entitles and equips all the proponents of unreason and error to a previously unimaginable degree. Particularly for a people with our history and propensities, the downside of the internet seems at least as profound as the upside.

The way internet search was designed to operate in the 90sthat is, the way information and beliefs now flow, rise, and fallis democratic in the extreme. Internet search algorithms are an example of Greshams law, whereby the bad drives outor at least overrunsthe good. On the internet, the prominence granted to any factual assertion or belief or theory depends on the preferences of billions of individual searchers. Each click on a link is effectively a vote pushing that version of the truth toward the top of the pile of results.

Exciting falsehoods tend to do well in the perpetual referenda, and become self-validating. A search for almost any alternative theory or belief seems to generate more links to true believers pages and sites than to legitimate or skeptical ones, and those tend to dominate the first few pages of results. For instance, beginning in the 90s, conspiracists decided that contrails, the skinny clouds of water vapor that form around jet-engine exhaust, were composed of exotic chemicals, part of a secret government scheme to test weapons or poison citizens or mitigate climate changeand renamed them chemtrails. When I Googled chemtrails proof, the first seven results offered so-called evidence of the nonexistent conspiracy. When I searched for government extraterrestrial cover-up, only one result in the first three pages didnt link to an article endorsing a conspiracy theory.

Before the web, it really wasnt easy to stumble across false or crazy information convincingly passing itself off as true. Today, however, as the Syracuse University professor Michael Barkun saw back in 2003 in A Culture of Conspiracy, such subject-specific areas as crank science, conspiracist politics, and occultism are not isolated from one another, but rather

The consequence of such mingling is that an individual who enters the communications system pursuing one interest soon becomes aware of stigmatized material on a broad range of subjects. As a result, those who come across one form of stigmatized knowledge will learn of others, in connections that imply that stigmatized knowledge is a unified domain, an alternative worldview, rather than a collection of unrelated ideas.

Academic research shows that religious and supernatural thinking leads people to believe that almost no big life events are accidental or random. As the authors of some recent cognitive-science studies at Yale put it, Individuals explicit religious and paranormal beliefs are the best predictors of their perception of purpose in life eventstheir tendency to view the world in terms of agency, purpose, and design. Americans have believed for centuries that the country was inspired and guided by an omniscient, omnipotent planner and interventionist manager. Since the 60s, that exceptional religiosity has fed the tendency to believe in conspiracies. In a recent paper called Conspiracy Theories and the Paranoid Style(s) of Mass Opinion, based on years of survey research, two University of Chicago political scientists, J. Eric Oliver and Thomas J. Wood, confirmed this special American connection. The likelihood of supporting conspiracy theories is strongly predicted, they found, by a propensity to attribute the source of unexplained or extraordinary events to unseen, intentional forces and a weakness for melodramatic narratives as explanations for prominent events, particularly those that interpret history relative to universal struggles between good and evil. Oliver and Wood found the single strongest driver of conspiracy belief to be belief in end-times prophecies.

As a 13-year-old, I watched William F. Buckley Jr.s Firing Line with my conservative dad, attended Teen Age Republicans summer camp, and, at the behest of a Nixon-campaign advance man in Omaha, ripped down Rockefeller and Reagan signs during the 1968 Nebraska primary campaign. A few years later, I was a McGovern-campaign volunteer, but I still watched and admired Buckley on PBS. Over the years, Ive voted for a few Republicans for state and local office. Today I disagree about political issues with friends and relatives to my right, but we agree on the essential contours of reality.

People on the left are by no means all scrupulously reasonable. Many give themselves over to the appealingly dubious and the untrue. But fantastical politics have become highly asymmetrical. Starting in the 1990s, Americas unhinged right became much larger and more influential than its unhinged left. There is no real left-wing equivalent of Sean Hannity, let alone Alex Jones. Moreover, the far right now has unprecedented political power; it controls much of the U.S. government.

Why did the grown-ups and designated drivers on the political left manage to remain basically in charge of their followers, while the reality-based right lost out to fantasy-prone true believers?

One reason, I think, is religion. The GOP is now quite explicitly Christian. The party is the American coalition of white Christians, papering over doctrinal and class differencesand now led, weirdly, by one of the least religious presidents ever. If more and more of a political partys members hold more and more extreme and extravagantly supernatural beliefs, doesnt it make sense that the party will be more and more open to make-believe in its politics?

I doubt the GOP elite deliberately engineered the synergies between the economic and religious sides of their contemporary coalition. But as the incomes of middle- and working-class people flatlined, Republicans pooh-poohed rising economic inequality and insecurity. Economic insecurity correlates with greater religiosity, and among white Americans, greater religiosity correlates with voting Republican. For Republican politicians and their rich-getting-richer donors, thats a virtuous circle, not a vicious one.

Religion aside, America simply has many more fervid conspiracists on the right, as research about belief in particular conspiracies confirms again and again. Only the American right has had a large and organized faction based on paranoid conspiracism for the past six decades. As the pioneer vehicle, the John Birch Society zoomed along and then sputtered out, but its fantastical paradigm and belligerent temperament has endured in other forms and under other brand names. When Barry Goldwater was the right-wing Republican presidential nominee in 1964, he had to play down any streaks of Bircher madness, but by 1979, in his memoir With No Apologies, he felt free to rave on about the globalist conspiracy and its pursuit of a new world order and impending period of slavery; the Council on Foreign Relations secret agenda for one-world rule; and the Trilateral Commissions plan for seizing control of the political government of the United States. The right has had three generations to steep in this, its taboo vapors wafting more and more into the main chambers of conservatism, becoming familiar, seeming less outlandish. Do you believe that a secretive power elite with a globalist agenda is conspiring to eventually rule the world through an authoritarian world government? Yes, say 34 percent of Republican voters, according to Public Policy Polling.

In the late 1960s and 70s, the reality-based left more or less won: retreat from Vietnam, civil-rights and environmental-protection laws, increasing legal and cultural equality for women, legal abortion, Keynesian economics triumphant.

But then the right wanted its turn to win. It pretty much accepted racial and gender equality and had to live with social welfare and regulation and bigger government, but it insisted on slowing things down. The political center moved rightbut in the 70s and 80s not yet unreasonably. Most of America decided that we were all free marketeers now, that business wasnt necessarily bad, and that government couldnt solve all problems. We still seemed to be in the midst of the normal cyclical seesawing of American politics. In the 90s, the right achieved two of its wildest dreams: The Soviet Union and international communism collapsed; and, as violent crime radically declined, law and order was restored.

But also starting in the 90s, the farthest-right quarter of Americans, lets say, couldnt and wouldnt adjust their beliefs to comport with their sides victories and the dramatically new and improved realities. Theyd made a god out of Reagan, but they ignored or didnt register that he was practical and reasonable, that he didnt completely buy his own antigovernment rhetoric. After Reagan, his hopped-up true-believer faction began insisting on total victory. But in a democracy, of course, total victory by any faction is a dangerous fantasy.

Another way the GOP got loopy was by overdoing libertarianism. I have some libertarian tendencies, but at full-strength purity its an ideology most boys grow out of. On the American right since the 80s, however, they have not. Republicans are very selective, cherry-picking libertarians: Let business do whatever it wants and dont spoil poor people with government handouts; let individuals have gun arsenals but not abortions or recreational drugs or marriage with whomever they wish; and dont mention Ayn Rands atheism. Libertarianism, remember, is an ideology whose most widely read and influential texts are explicitly fiction. I grew up reading Ayn Rand, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has said, and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are, and what my beliefs are. It was that fiction that allowed him and so many other higher-IQ Americans to see modern America as a dystopia in which selfishness is righteous and they are the last heroes. I think a lot of people, Ryan said in 2009, would observe that we are right now living in an Ayn Rand novel. Im assuming he meant Atlas Shrugged, the novel that Trumps secretary of state (and former CEO of ExxonMobil) has said is his favorite book. Its the story of a heroic cabal of mens-men industrialists who cause the U.S. government to collapse so they can take over, start again, and make everything right.

For a while, Republican leaders effectively encouraged and exploited the predispositions of their variously fantastical and extreme partisans. Karl Rove was stone-cold cynical, the Wizard of Ozs evil twin coming out from behind the curtain for a candid chat shortly before he won a second term for George W. Bush, about how judicious study of discernible reality [is] not the way the world really works anymore. These leaders were rational people who understood that a large fraction of citizens dont bother with rationality when they vote, that a lot of voters resent the judicious study of discernible reality. Keeping those people angry and frightened won them elections.

But over the past few decades, a lot of the rabble they roused came to believe all the untruths. The problem is that Republicans have purposefully torn down the validating institutions, the political journalist Josh Barro, a Republican until 2016, wrote last year. They have convinced voters that the media cannot be trusted; they have gotten them used to ignoring inconvenient facts about policy; and they have abolished standards of discourse. The partys ideological center of gravity swerved way to the right of Rove and all the Bushes, finally knocking them and their clubmates aside. What had been the partys fantastical fringe became its middle. Reasonable Republicanism was replaced by absolutism: no new taxes, virtually no regulation, abolish the EPA and the IRS and the Federal Reserve.

When I was growing up in Nebraska, my Republican parents loathed all Kennedys, distrusted unions, and complained about confiscatory federal income-tax rates of 91 percent. But conservatism to them also meant conserving the natural environment and allowing people to make their own choices, including about abortion. They were emphatically reasonable, disinclined to believe in secret Communist/Washington/elite plots to destroy America, rolling their eyes and shaking their heads about far-right acquaintancessuch as our neighbors, the parents of the future Mrs. Clarence Thomas, who considered Richard Nixon suspiciously leftish. My parents never belonged to a church. They were godless Midwestern Republicans, born and raisedwhich wasnt so odd 40 years ago. Until about 1980, the Christian right was not a phrase in American politics. In 2000, my widowed mom, having voted for 14 Republican presidential nominees in a row, quit a party that had become too Christian for her.

Read more from the original source:

How America Lost Its Mind - The Atlantic

The philosopher who poisoned German theology – Catholic Herald Online (blog)

Portrait by Jakob Schlesinger, Berlin 1831

Modern German Catholic thought is influenced by a heretical view of God's nature

Otto von Bismarck, the 19th-century Chancellor of Germany, tried and failed to bring the Catholic Church to heel. He would have been delighted to see its state today. With pews emptying at a great rate, and few priestly vocations, the fact that the Church remains one of the largest employers could only prove that it had become the servant of state that he hoped it would be. Yet perhaps Bismarck might want to know: How have others achieved what I failed to bring about? At least part of the answer comes from within the German Church.

Theologically, Germany has been ground zero for centuries: just think of Albert the Great mentoring St Thomas Aquinas, or the Jesuit-led Counter-Reformation which answered Luthers schismatic dissent. But German theology has never quite recovered from its greatest challenge: Enlightenment rationalism and the attempts to overcome it through Hegelian dialectic. Even today, Hegels influence dominates German theology.

The Hegelian view of Gods involvement in the unfolding of history as Geist (Spirit) is at root a Christian heresy, reminiscent of the spiritualism of the 12th-century theologian Joachim de Fiore. For the Hegelian, God suffers with, and changes, precisely through the sin and suffering of his creatures, dialectically pouring out his love and mercy through the progress of history.

Citing a Lutheran hymn, God Himself is Dead, Hegel argues that God unites death to his nature. And so when we encounter suffering and death, we taste the particularities of the eternal divine history. As he puts it, suffering is a moment in the nature of God himself; it has taken place in God himself. For Hegel, suffering is an aspect of Gods eternal nature. Our sin and suffering is necessary for God to be God.

This heretical view has had widespread influence in modern Catholic and Protestant accounts of Gods nature. Its often given a pastoral veneer of the God who weeps with us. Yet, tragically unaware of his error, the Hegelian homilist preaches a God who cannot save: a God who is so eternally bound to our tears he cannot truly wipe them away.

Many 20th-century German theologians followed in Hegels footsteps. A basic principle was Hegels dialectic process itself as revelatory, which is to say they smuggled into their ideas on doctrinal development the notion that God was continuing to reveal himself in history, as though there was always something becoming in God, and thus, in the Church. Hegels spiritual forerunner Joachim de Fiore had predicted a third age of the Holy Spirit which would sing a new Church into being, and its striking how many German theologians have been entranced by the idea of a future Church very different to the holy and apostolic one of the past.

This is not to say Hegel is the answer to Bismarcks hypothetical question. There is a great difference between the Left Hegelian Ludwig Feuerbachs idea of religion as projection of inner spirit and the theologies of Karl Rahner or Walter Kasper. But there is nevertheless something deeply Hegelian about making the unfolding of human experience in history a standard for theological development to which God or the Church, always in mercy, must conform. Unfortunately, this is a terrible standard for change which leads not only to false reform, but to apostasy and desolation.

The standard for development, as 19th century German theologian Matthias Scheeben understood as well as Cardinal Newman, must be divinely revealed truths, the deposit of faith, passed from Christ to his apostles. Spiritual renewal in Germany can only begin if German bishops, priests, and laity alike recognize that change and development must be ordered to eternal truths, not to the needs of state, the Geist of culture, or the historical unfolding of inner human experience. The Church conforms not to the needs of nations, but to the fullness of Truth revealed by God Incarnate in Jesus Christ.

C C Pecknold is associate professor of theology at The Catholic University of America

This article first appeared in the August 11 2017 issue of the Catholic Herald. To read the magazine in full, from anywhere in the world, go here

Originally posted here:

The philosopher who poisoned German theology - Catholic Herald Online (blog)

The difficult truths behind ‘Dunkirk’ – The Washington Post – Washington Post

August 11

Michael Gerson began his July 28 op-ed, The deliverance of a nation, with the statement that one of the greatest victories of World War II was the mass evacuation of British and French troops from the beach at Dunkirk in 1940.Most historians would disagree.Indeed, Winston Churchill himself said of this episode: We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory.Wars are not won by evacuations.

Gail E. Makinen, Arlington

In his Aug. 1 op-ed, The Brits knew their enemy atDunkirk, Richard Cohen lamented that the movie Dunkirk did not explicitly identify the enemy (Nazi Germany).

Cohen was correct to note the evilness of the Nazi ideology. But it was more: The early years of World War II were an existential struggle of those holding humanistic values treasured by all religions predominantly Judeo-Christian among the English; Hindu and Islamic among the Indian against a perverse, exclusionary European ideology that sought to obliterate races and values.

In an online WorldViews post, Ishaan Tharoor pointed out the films myopic exclusion of Indians.

People of many faiths share in the struggle for humanistic values, such as those of the Islamic faith who fight the Islamic State, which shares many of the aspects of Nazi ideology.

To exclude through oversight, as happened with Dunkirk, or through deliberate policy, as with the various immigration policies being instituted by our government, fails a key tenet of humanism: inclusion, which serves to strengthen us all.

Jim Cassedy, Hyattsville

I disagree with the Aug. 8 letter The relevant lesson from Dunkirk.The run-up to World War II featured German remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936, in violation of the Versailles Treaty; the return to Germany of the Saar as the result of a free election; the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria in the spring of 1938, with the support of perhaps the majority of Austrians; and the annexation of the Sudetenland, as a result of the Munich Agreement.Only the remilitarization of the Rhineland offered a clear pretext for British and French intervention, and we now know that the token German force in the Rhineland had been ordered to retreat if such intervention occurred.

England and France had no military obligation to protect Poland.After the Germans entered Prague in March 1939, despite Adolf Hitlers having assured British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain that he did not want a single Czech, it was obvious that Poland would be Hitlers next target. This led Britain and France to sign a treaty with Poland to come to its aid in the event of German (but not Soviet) intervention, despite the inability of Britain and France to get any sizable military force to Poland prior to the German attack on Sept. 1, 1939.Before that, Germany pressured Poland to return Danzig and the Polish corridor that separated most of Germany from East Prussia.When Poland did not, Hitler opted for war, having been assured by his foreign minister that Britain and France would not come to Polands aid.Also, the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939 made it clear that anyone coming to Polands aid would confront Germanys new ally, the Soviet Union.

The defensive walls i.e., the Maginot Line werent as bad an idea as commonly thought.The key problem was Belgian neutrality, which prevented the extension of the Maginot Line northward into Belgian territory, through which the German attack had come in 1914 and would come again in the spring of 1940.We will never know what might have happened if the Maginot Line had been completed along the entire Belgian-German border and if the French military hadnt regarded the Ardennes as impenetrable.

Dunkirk happened because the Germans were simultaneously able to smash through Belgian defenses and penetrate the Ardennes .Historians still dispute why the Wehrmacht allowed the Dunkirk pocket to remain open as long as it was, which made the retreat of much of the British army and some French and Belgian forces possible.

Steven Shore, Columbia

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The difficult truths behind 'Dunkirk' - The Washington Post - Washington Post

Artwork Mocking Google’s Censorship Just Started Popping Up In California – The Federalist

New street art mocks Google's decision to reject those who "Think Different".

Artwork mocking Google for its oppressive censorship is popping up all over the Los Angeles area, near Googles office in Venice, California.

Earlier this week, Google fired one of its engineers, James Damore, after he wrote a 10-page memo criticizing the way the tech giant treated female employees as well as the companys crippling level of liberal bias. In the memo, Damore pointed out the fact that men and women are different, and argued Googles refusal to recognize these differences and embrace them was hurting the company. The memo was distorted by members of the media as an anti-diversity tirade, when in reality, as many social scientists pointed out,science backs up Damores statements.

Portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace, Google CEO Sundar Pichai wrote in a memo earlier this week.

Right-wing street artist Sabo took credit for the work in a series of tweets blasting the tech company.

Last night, news broke that Google cancelled an all hands on deck meeting about Damores firing out of fear that it would leak to the media. New York Times columnist David Brooks called for Pichai to resign. And Damore has taken to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to explain why he was fired.

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Artwork Mocking Google's Censorship Just Started Popping Up In California - The Federalist

Conservatives Hit By Wave Of YouTube Censorsh | The Daily Caller – The Daily Caller

YouTube is now demonetizing videos from content creators deemed too controversial for the platform, and conservatives and independents are being heavily impacted.

The move follows YouTubes announcement earlier in August to catch and flag controversial religious and supremacist content hosted on the popular video-hosting website. Political and social commentators on YouTube are feeling the hurtand they believe that they may be on a blacklist for having the wrong opinions.

The Daily Caller previously spoke to several popular commentary YouTubers who expressed skepticism of the system when the move was first announced last week.

Affected creators are unable to make money from their work, which is automatically flagged or vetted by volunteer experts. In addition, the new system incorporates tougher standards for controversial videos that do not break YouTubes terms of service, which are placed in a purgatory state that effectively censors them from being recommended to YouTube viewers.

The Daily Caller spoke to conservative and independent YouTubers whose channels are now being affected by the new policy. Conservative journalist Lauren Southern believes there is a drive to stifle politically divergent voices.

I think it would be insane to suggest theres not an active effort to censor conservative and independent views, said Southern. Considering most of Silicon Valley participate in the censorship of alleged hate speech, diversity hiring and inclusivity committees. Their entire model is based around a far left outline. Theres no merit hiring, theres no support of free speech and there certainly is not an equal representation of political views at these companies.

Independent journalist and activist Luke Rudkowski, who runs WeAreChange, told The Daily Caller that hundreds of his videos were demonetized in a single day on Thursday, effectively killing his ability to earn a living on YouTube.

Having had 660 of my videos demonetized in one day left me a little stunned since this is the core for my income but left me with the impression that this was done on purpose, said Rudkowski, who said that the videos included some of his most popular videos from years ago. This was videos from years ago predominately targeting the most viewed videos which has eviscerated my income.

Rudkowski, who believes it isnt a coincidence that he was targeted, says that he has experienced repeated issues with YouTube.

After dealing with all the repeated issues with YouTube it is clear that this is a campaign to de-incentivize any critical thinkers and anti authoritarians from their platform, he said.

Daniel Sulzbach, better known as MrRepzion, told the Daily Caller that YouTubes demonetization of his videos has hurt his incentive to make new content. He says that it hasnt been the first time his videos were demonetized, but when the issue happened previously in early 2017, he was able to successfully appeal for them to be restored.

The difference now is that my videos are not being restored with monetization when I file for manual review, said Sulzbach.

The YouTuber, who is known for his blistering culture critiques, discussions about atheism, and video game topics, says he doesnt understand why so many of his videos were flagged.

Some of them make zero sense, especially my video game streams, he said. This is just conjecture at this point, but I think my channel could be on a potential blacklist or list of some sort where my content is looked upon more than others?

I dont make any crazy radical videos, he continued. I hardly even do videos regarding feminism, social justice, etc. anymore. He says that even a 2-year old video response to an Instagram was demonetized without explanation, as well as content from when he was still a Christian.

Sulzbach told the Daily Caller that he plans to rely solely on Patreon to keep making videos, for now. If I fall below a threshold, Ill just quit, he said.

Edgy YouTube comedian Razorfist says every single one of his videos was demonetized. His biggest issue with the site was how the platform values progressive voices over everyone else through biased algorithms. Razorfist cited a video rebuttal to Sam Seder (a left wing comedian) as an example of the bias. He claims that Seder posted a reply containing Razorfists video in its entirety, but the algorithm flagged the original video for demonetization.

If leftist channels are being white-listed, someones going to have to explain to me how this algorithm is functionally any different than a conservative blacklist, he said.Razorfist tells the Daily Caller that he knows his content is edgy and profane, and understands why large family-friendly companies wouldnt want to advertise on his videos, but he wants to know why Google allows for leftist comedians to perform the same humor without any backlash.

Googles going to need to explain to me why John Oliver can engage in weekly invective punctuated by a hail of profane epithets, skew it leftward, and still have ads for Pampers and pimple cream adorn the margins of his unwatchable videos, he said.

Conservative vlogger and cultural pundit Mark Dice told The Daily Caller he believes YouTube is upset at the rise of conservative channels on YouTube over the past year, and that the new policies are designed to squelch dissenting voices.

I think YouTube is furious that so many conservative channels have gotten so popular in the last year, and they dont want us to be able to work full-time doing what were doing because our message is at odds with almost everything that Google and YouTubes leadership stands for, said Dice, who says that even his monetized videos are underperforming as a result of the changes.

To deal with the demonetization of his channel, Dice said that he plans to continue producing videos and supplementing his income through Patreon and merchandise sales, and a new book. He says that his videos performed better when he had a 10th of his subscriber count, years ago.

Dice believes that despite the seeming hopelessness of the situation expressed by so many other YouTubers, Google and YouTube may have made have shot themselves in the foot by censoring conservatives.

YouTube has kicked a bees nest by going after Diamond and Silk [a channel of two black female Trump supporters]. I think it wont be long before President Trump is commenting on YouTubes censorship, he said.

Ian Miles Cheong is a journalist and outspoken media critic. You can reach him through social media at@stillgray on Twitterand onFacebook.

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Conservatives Hit By Wave Of YouTube Censorsh | The Daily Caller - The Daily Caller

Federal government email suggests censorship over ‘climate change’ – Washington Examiner

Department of Agriculture staff members have been advised to use the term "weather extremes" rather than "climate change" in their government work, according to a report.

An email sent to staffers at the Natural Resources Conservation Service, (NRCS) -- a USDA unit responsible for farming, ranching, and private forest land conservation -- lists terms that should not be used and suggests possible replacements in light of the Trump administration's position on climate science, The Guardian reported.

The note, sent by Soil Health Director Bianca Moebius-Clune, outlines a shift in language around the cause of human-driven climate change, proposing the term "reduce greenhouse gases" be nixed in favor of "build soil organic matter, increase nutrient use efficiency." In addition, "sequester carbon" would be altered to "build soil organic matter."

"We won't change the modeling, just how we talk about it," Moebius-Clune wrote on February 16, saying the language had been provided to her staff with the suggestion to pass it on to colleagues within the department. "There are a lot of benefits to putting carbon back in the sail (sic), climate mitigation is just one of them."

Moebius-Clune added a coworker from USDA's public affairs unit had given her advice to "tamp down on discretionary messaging right now."

Trump has frequently questioned climate change science and his administration formally gave the UN notice Friday of the United States' intention to withdraw from Paris climate accord. Many scientists believe climate change, and the subsequent warming of the globe, is being caused by the burning of fossil fuels and other human factors.

"The Natural Resources Conservation Service has not received direction from USDA or the administration to modify its communications on climate change or any other topic," a NRCS spokeswoman told the Washington Examiner. "These emails, sent in the first days of the new administration to a small number of agency staff, did not reflect the direction of senior agency leadership."

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Federal government email suggests censorship over 'climate change' - Washington Examiner